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Hampshire Cricket Historian Dave Allen continues the 'From The Archive' series ahead of this Saturday's Royal London One-Day Cup final
With the precise future of the longer limited-overs competitions uncertain and the Final definitely moving to Trent Bridge, it’s a poignant moment to reflect on 57 years at Lord’s – and rather special that Hampshire will be one of the counties appearing there in the first Final ever to take place in May.
The first one on 7 September 1963, was contested with a maximum of 65 overs per side and up to 15 overs per bowler. In the event, neither side used their full overs and the aggregate for the day was just 322 runs in 123 overs and four balls – a scoring rate of just over 2.5 runs per over.
Hampshire had gone out at the first attempt back in May 1963, and would be the last of the original 17 counties to reach a Final when they beat Derbyshire in the B&H Cup in 1988 thanks to some astute field placing by Mark Nicholas and Steve Jefferies’ record 5-13. The first Final in 1963 was shown in black & white by the BBC’s only television channel, although transmission ended at 5pm in favour of cartoons and ‘Juke Box Jury’. By 1988, transmission was in colour on BBC 1 & 2 and scheduled until 7.25pm – in the event the match finished before the pubs opened: Derbyshire 117 in the 47th of their 55 overs; Hampshire 118-3 in the 32nd.
Those matches and Hampshire’s next two triumphs in the bright sunshine of 1991 (Nat West) and two-day damp in 1992 (B&H) were played with a red ball and cricketers wearing whites. Robin Smith had hit an electric 38 from 27 balls in the first Final and he followed it with 78 (matched by debutant Tony Middleton) in 1991 and 90 in 1992. A nice moment in 1988 came with veteran David Turner at the wicket as Hampshire won; he remains the only man to have won a Championship, Sunday League and Lord’s Final with Hampshire, a record that is probably secure for ever. Cardigan Connor took 3-39 in 1991, and Malcolm Marshall 3-30 in 1992 – he had missed the first two Finals on tour with West Indies.
Another star bowler, Shane Warne, was absent on tour when his deputy Shaun Udal led Hampshire to victory in the C&G Trophy in 2005 by which time Hampshire sported gold shirts with hints of blue. Shaun was the first Hampshire-born captain to hold a trophy for the county, but the stars on the day came from overseas; Ervine 104, Pothas 68, Watson 3-34 and Bichel 3-57. That was Hampshire’s first trophy in 13 years but we returned two years later for a soggy two-day defeat v Durham, our only losing Final and best forgotten.
The sun returned in 2009 as Dominic Cork (4-41) starred for captain ‘Dimi’ Mascarenhas in a 50-over victory in the Friends Provident Trophy. Jimmy Adams scored 55 that day and three years later he returned as captain for that last-ball thriller in the Clydesdale Bank Trophy against Warwickshire when, in the gloom, Neil Carter missed the last ball from Kabir Ali, Michael Bates gathered safely and Hampshire won by virtue of losing fewer wickets, 244-5 v 244-7. Jimmy Adams with 66 was Man-of-the-Match, and another Hampshire-man, Chris Wood, took 3-39.
The details of last year’s Royal London Cup Final are probably fresh, Kent kindly inviting us to bat, the fine opening partnership (Alsop 72), Rossouw’s century, Northeast booed in a very useful knock of 75 and Kent eventually falling short thanks not least to four run-outs. Hampshire’s record 330-7 in 50 overs dwarfed all previous Final scores in our matches – and on its own, passed easily that aggregate from the first Final all those years before. Last year we saw 599 runs yet even that was short of the aggregate when we played Somerset last year, when they beat our 356-9 from the last ball. How the game has changed.
