Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

‘ The surname DAFT has been known in Nottingham since the thirteenth century: its significance is gentle.’ F.S.Ashley-Cooper, A Cricketer’s Yarns , Chapman and Hall, 1926 ‘DAFT: English nickname for a meek person, rather than a stupid one: from Middle English – mild, gentle, meek. Old English – gedœfte. The surname survives in the East Midlands, in spite of the unfavourable connotations that were acquired by the word in the fifteenth century.’ Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, A Dictionary of Surnames , Oxford University Press, 1988 6