Hampshire County Cricket Club 1946-2006

Product Information

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. Smith has written two books that are essentially autobiographical in nature. The first, Quest For Number One, published in 1993, is not exactly an autobiography, but the more recent, The Judge, appeared in 2019 certainly is. It is a thought provoking and engrossing read on the subject of a man at whom life has certainly aimed a few short ones over the years. 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. Shaun ‘Shaggy’ Udal was an off spinner and an interesting character who, very late in his career, won four Test caps against India and Pakistan. Udal’s autobiography, My Turn To Spin, appeared in 2007, coinciding with his retirement. From yesterday’s Daily Telegraph: “The constant tinkering with County Championship regulations will continue next year”. They predict firstly that from two last year the number of matches played with the Kookaburra ball will be doubled to four.

Shane Snater had been helped off the field just over 24 hours previous, having damaged his calf while bowling, but bravely reappeared with Michael Pepper as his runner. He lasted just three balls before he was lbw to Dawson. 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.

Golf

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. 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. 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. 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.

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): 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.

Charity

We have played Sussex every year starting with our first-ever T20 match in 2003 at the Rose Bowl, and our overall record is Won 15; Lost 11 with one that started with No Result, and five Abandoned with no play. 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. 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. 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.