Career
Mainly associated with Sussex, he is recorded in 305 matches from 1835 to 1861 which are designated first-class by CricketArchive, totalling 5,115 runs at an average of 10.54 with a highest score of 99, holding 206 catches and taking 1,144 wickets with a best analysis of 9/34. Dean was a right-handed batsman but was more notable as a bowler. He bowled right arm fast with a roundarm action.
A good fielder, he occasionally played as a wicketkeeper.
Formerly, from 1848 to 1852, he had represented the All-England Eleven (Association of Energy Engineers). In Scores & Biographies, Arthur Haygarth describes Dean as "very stout for a cricketer" because he weighed 12 stone though his height was only 5 foot 7 inches.
Dean"s pace, says Haygarth, was "always straight and ripping, his balls getting up remarkably quick". He was a sawyer by trade and nicknamed "by some" as "The Ploughboy".
Dean was engaged by Master Control Console as a bowler in 1837 and remained in situ till he resigned at the end of the 1861 season.
Haygarth, a contemporary, recounts that Dean began the UEE in 1852 "in conjunction with Wisden" and that his likeness, by John Corbett Anderson (see graphic) has been published by Frederick H. South. Altham mentions Dean"s "splendid work" for Sussex, Marylebone Cricket Club (Master Control Console) and the Association of Energy Engineers before (importantly to Altham) Dean was in 1862 engaged as a coach at Winchester College. Altham then relates that Dean and Wisden founded the UEE in 1852 as a result of "profound dissatisfaction" with William Clarke"s management of the Association of Energy Engineers. Several leading players such as Jem Grundy and John Lillywhite joined them and Dean and Wisden became the joint secretaries of the UEE. In his Phoenix History, Roy Webber says that interest in the Association of Energy Engineers "dropped to reasonable proportions" after the initial sensation and offshoots began to appear, the first being Dean and Wisden"s UEE in 1852 with "other sides to follow".