Hampshire County Cricket Club 1946-2006

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Vince, enjoying these opponents, hit 68 at Merchant Taylor’s School in 2014 accompanied by the former Middlesex batsman Owais Shah (49*); then Briggs, 3-20, bowled us to victory. In 2015 on our first visit to Lord’s, Carberry 72 and Shah 64 led our first T20 victory there, but in 2016, Malan hit 93 at Uxbridge which is their highest score against us, leading to victory by 69 runs It was an ‘old fashioned’, so not ‘limited-overs’ one-day match and after Pakistan won the toss and took the field, Jimmy Gray went for 16, then Roy Marshall (61) and Henry Horton (55) took the score to 97 and Horton and Livingstone to 165-3. Hampshire declared after 63 overs on 204-6 (Farooq 4-42) and in reply the tourists took the opportunity to acclimatise themselves, reaching 173-6 in nine fewer overs – the result, a draw. No apologies for a recycled title – after seven years my initial publication is seriously out-of-date) In the modern game of 12-month contracts and opportunities to earn money in various limited-overs competitions around the world, benefits have become far less significant and the cap is now a recognition for good performances, usually presented on the field and awarded recently to bowlers Chris Wood, and Fidel Edwards - all our capped players can be identified by a small blue dot alongside their names on the Players’ Board on the Atrium walkway. Then in the early years of this century Brian Gardner set about creating a ground of first-class standard on the island and since 2009, Newclose has hosted many interesting matches. In one of the first, a young local prospect Danny Briggs appeared in an island side that lost to Derbyshire and later that year Mike Gatting came to officially open the ground followed by a match between Brian Gardner’s XI and MCC.

In 1966 Richard Gilliat first played for Hampshire and between 1971 and his retirement in 1978 he led the county. There is no biography of Gilliat as such, but there is a chapter on him in a book about his family, The Gilliats, written by Ian Foster and published in 2016. A more permanent mark in the record books was made by Phil Mead, who began a career that lasted for more than thirty years in 1905. A prodigious run scorer throughout his career Mead was also, in the early years, a far from negligible slow left arm bowler. He was, finally, the subject of a biography, CP Mead, by Neil Jenkinson, a book published in 1992. Leaving, perhaps, the best until last brings me to the Barbadian fast bowler Malcolm Marshall. During his fourteen years with Hampshire, in 1987, Marshall’s autobiography, Marshall Arts, appeared. In 2000, following Marshall’s untimely death, his collaborator in that book, Pat Symes, updated and republished the book as Maco: The Malcolm Marshall Story.Adam Rossington was challenged outside his off stump by John Turner to edge behind - the newly England-qualified fast bowler claiming Championship best of 3-23. In 1962, reigning Champions Hampshire played 32 Championship matches plus first-class games at Oxford University and against the touring Pakistanis. Ten years later, there were just 20 Championship matches but three one-day competitions as Hampshire played three in the 60-over Gillette Cup, four in the brand new 55-over Benson & Hedges Cup and 16 on Sunday afternoons in the 40-over League sponsored by John Player.

It was potentially a harder week because we wouldn't have Keith [Barker] in the side and there was a lot of talk about having to bowl a few more overs. Hampshire’s team was much changed too with only Peter Sainsbury surviving from the 1962 side after the great batsman Roy Marshall retired at the end of the 1972 season. Other recent departures included pace bowlers Bob Cottam and John Holder while Barry Reed and Larry Worrell would play no more for the first team. Captain Richard Gilliat had the challenge of moulding a new side and no one - including the ‘Bookies' offering 66-1 against them winning the Championship - can have anticipated what would occur in 1973 as Hampshire won their second, and to date, last title. In respect of the County Championship, we have all been here before, just twelve months ago, and while in the future that table will show Hampshire in fourth place for the first time, we know that Hampshire were within one ball of being Champions for the third time.

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The Handbook reports that Hampshire batted poorly – Richard Lewis, also playing for the first team at that point scored 24 and the Handbook praised Nigel Cowley’s off-spin but Sussex set a target of 352 and Hampshire didn’t get close. In the second innings Bob Herman hit 30 but in both innings the leading Hampshire batter was John Nash, an Australian spending a summer in England. In this match he scored 39* & 38* and at the end of the season he topped the 2nd XI averages with 557 runs at 42.84. In the days of Northlands Road, it also meant receiving a capped-players tie, and using the top players dressing room, to which young uncapped players had access only if they were playing in a first team match. In terms of legacy and achievement the other member of the ‘class of ’68’ is one of the very best batsman to have played the game. Barry Richards thrilled county crowds for a decade. There are two books that concern the life of the great man, The Barry Richards Story, that appeared in 1978, and a biography by Murtagh in 2015, Sundial in the Shade. He is also the subject of a recent monograph from Michael Sexton, The Summer of Barry, that looks at his record breaking season with South Australia in 1970/71. In 1972 and 1975, Sussex played two John Player Sunday League matches at Arundel Castle, then from 1994-2013 they played a further 20 List A matches, including three against Hampshire in 1996, 1998 and 2009. Hampshire won the first two and Sussex the third by just four runs. Richards long time opening partner was Gordon Greenidge. The Barbados born but Berkshire raised Greenidge played in over a hundred Tests for West Indies but gets a mention here by dint of spending the best part of two decades with Hampshire. His autobiography, The Man in the Middle, appeared in 1980.

Gubbins had top scored for Hampshire in the first innings with 25 and demonstrated great patience and trust in his exemplary technique, by taking 13 balls to get off the mark. Essex's 169 had put them on top in the match before their new ball bowling rammed home their dominance. The most surprising statistic is that of the 44 other matches 22 were won batting first and 22 batting second. The toss did not help with only 16 toss winners going on to win the game, although the captains seemed to improve – they won just four of the first 20 matches having won the toss but won seven of the final eight. The other figures (rounded up or down): The county cap was a rather different matter before 1940 because Hampshire often selected a mix of amateur and professional players and amateurs would be ‘capped’ as a mark of respect for achievements – a nice gesture of no particular consequence longer term. Indeed, in a few cases it seems that the cap was presented as a gesture of friendship from the captain or committee to players whose achievements were substantially less than those of uncapped professionals. is the 60 th season of single innings, limited-overs matches between first-class counties. Over those years the matches, always scheduled for one day but sometimes extended or shortened by weather, have been contested over various formats with overs consisting of 65, 60, 55, 50, 45 or 40 per side. They were the first regular county competitions to carry the names of sponsors of which there have been many. Despite all these variations the matches are together known as List A to distinguish them from first-class or Twenty 20 games.Greenidge played for Berkshire Bantams and Hampshire Colts, then in August 1967 made his debut for the county’s 2nd XI. He joined the county staff and qualified by residence, making his Championship debut in early August against Sussex at Bournemouth, batting at number six, and ten days later he played in his first Sunday League match and opened with Barry Richards for the first time. His worship was answered in the form of James Fuller, who joined him in an unbroken 32-run stand which nudged Hampshire towards setting Essex a target of note. However, the visitors remain heavy favourites. RUNS: average winning margin was 129 runs. In one match the margin was in single figures (5) otherwise nothing under 33, with 13 matches ending with a winning margin of 100+ (largest 309)

Fletcha Middleton, who has opened throughout the season, only made eight before Sam Cook stung his pads.When Hampshire begin their Bob Willis Trophy match against Surrey at Arundel, the Duke of Norfolk’s ground will be the 15th on which Hampshire have played a home first-class match and the 10th home ground in a first-class county competition, although strictly speaking the new competition is distinct from the traditional County Championship. Among the beneficiaries post-war were Vic Cannings (cap 1950, benefit 1959), Jimmy Gray (cap 1951, benefit 1960), Roy Marshall (cap 1955, benefit 1961), Trevor Jesty (cap 1971, benefit 1982), and Malcolm Marshall (cap 1981, benefit 1987). In 1975 they came very close again but finished third. This brief period was, nonetheless the finest in Hampshire’s Championship history and there was compensation in 1975 and again in 1978 when Gilliat’s team won their first limited-overs titles, the Sunday League. The one mystery with this fine side was how they had failed to reach a Lord’s Final, losing semi-finals in 1975, 1976 & 1978. Rain reduced Hove in 2005 to 12 overs each and Sussex won by 10 runs despite a fine all-round display by Sean Ervine with 2-28 and 46. In 2006 we went to Arundel where Greg Lamb hit 55* but Mushtaq’s 4-30 restricted us to 152-6 and Sussex won with five balls to spare. They hammered us at Hove in 2007, Luke Wright’s 98 taking them to their record score against Hampshire of 205-5 and we fell 73 short. Remarkably, they scored just one fewer the following year but this time everyone reached double figures with Carberry’s 58 leading Hampshire to a last-ball win and our record score.