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Hampshire Cricket Historian Dave Allen continues the 'From The Archive' series with a reflection on the introduction of limited-overs cricket into the English game
As Hampshire take on Yorkshire in the second instalment of Specsavers County Championship, Club historian Dave Allen, looks back at the history of our opponents.
JIMMY WINS IT
Yorkshire is the great County Championship side. Since the competition’s formal reorganisation in 1890 they have won the title in 33 of the 120 seasons – two wars having intervened in 10 years. Given that, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hampshire have won only 20 of the 174 matches between the two sides to the start of 2019; interestingly just seven of those wins came on home territory, and not one at Northlands Road.
Hampshire’s first victory came in their first Championship season of 1895 at Sheffield, and in the following year ‘Teddy’ Wynyard scored Hampshire’s first Championship double century (268) at Southampton. In 1898, our stalwart bowler Harry Baldwin chose the match v Yorkshire for his benefit game but after the first day was rained off, Yorkshire beat Hampshire by an innings on the second – the only Hampshire match completed in one day – and poor Harry made a loss.
One of Hampshire’s greatest games came in June 1920 at Leeds - particularly since it was against the reigning Champions. Hampshire scored 456-2 declared (Brown 232*, Mead 122*, Bowell 95), beating Yorkshire, 159 & 225, by an innings and 72 runs – Kennedy taking 10-135 in the match. When Yorkshire returned to Portsmouth at the end of August, they took their revenge, scoring 585-3 declared with Holmes posting 302* – a record on that ground in the highest Yorkshire innings v Hampshire until 2016. They dismissed Hampshire for 131 & 219, winning by an innings and 235 runs.
For many years, we played Yorkshire mainly at Bournemouth in August, hoping to persuade the northern county’s supporters to combine cricket with family seaside holidays. We did meet Yorkshire recently in Basingstoke but otherwise in this century only at the Rose/The Ageas Bowl and we have won there twice, in 2006 & 2008. In the first of those seasons we beat Yorkshire at home and away for the first and only time in our history.
The victory at Headingley in the first week of June 2006, was the first occasion on which any county had beaten Yorkshire with a fourth innings score exceeding 400. Yorkshire, captained by Craig White, batted first and were in trouble at 13-3 and 55-4, until half-centuries by future Hampshire men White and Michael Lumb, plus a career best 91 by Bresnan took them to 350 (Warne 4-68). By contrast Hampshire fell from 188-2 (Thorneley 76) to 248 all out, with four ‘ducks’ and Billy Taylor 0*.
Anthony McGrath scored 127, before Yorkshire declared on 301-8, setting Hampshire a target of 404 to win, and Jimmy Adams and Michael Carberry gave them a fine start with a partnership of 133 before Carberry fell to the medium-pace of McGrath, Crawley went soon after, but Thorneley passed 70 again, taking Hampshire to 301. Three wickets fell for 56 runs, until at 357-5 Greg Lamb joined Adams who was now in three figures for the first time in the County Championship. He held firm, while Lamb hit 32* from 18 balls as the pair took Hampshire to a famous victory. Jimmy Adams had batted on-and-on finishing on 168* in almost seven-and-a-half hours, having faced 313 balls.
Less than two months later, Jimmy and his opening partner Michael Carberry were at the wicket as Hampshire beat Yorkshire again, this time by 10 wickets – a unique ‘double’, thanks principally to a big hundred from John Crawley and 6-65 by ‘Dimi’ Mascarenhas. Jimmy Adams took to batting for long periods; between the two Yorkshire matches he went to Trent Bridge and batted for nearly 10 hours, scoring 262* in a drawn game, while his score of 194 at Liverpool in 2010 was at ten hours & 35 minutes, we believe the longest innings ever played for the county. Jimmy’s Hampshire career ended with 23 centuries, the last of which was, perhaps inevitably, against Yorkshire in 2018. His Hampshire career average of 37.88 is higher than any other player born within the county, and that is testament to a fine Hampshire cricketer and a delightful man.
