Hampshire Through The Decades: 1960s

Hampshire Cricket's historian, Dave Allen, is back with a brand new series - Hampshire Through The Decades - as he looks at some of the best moments from Hampshire's history from each decade following the conclusion of the World War II. 

This week's next instalment sees him take a journey back to the 1960s.

In 1961, approaching the centenary of the establishment of the County Club and two hundred years since the great achievements of the men of Hambledon, Hampshire won county cricket’s greatest prize, the County Championship, for the first time.

By the end of that decade there would be three annual prizes and soon a fourth, while other changes shifted control from the two dominant post-war sides, the ‘giants’ of Surrey and Yorkshire. It is perhaps difficult at this distance to recognise what a remarkable achievement Hampshire’s success was in 1961.

If we date the ‘modern’ Championship from 1890, we find that over the 61 seasons to 1960 (ten lost to wars) Yorkshire won 24; Surrey won 14 and both had one more shared title, as did Lancashire who won seven outright up to 1934. Middlesex, won four and one more shared, Kent four, all before 1914, Nottinghamshire two, Warwickshire won in 1911 and again 40 years later, while Derbyshire (1936) and Glamorgan (1948) had been as surprising as Hampshire in 1961.

In May 1961 then, eight sides had never won a trophy - including Hampshire - who began the season winning three of their first five games and were the first side to prevent a Yorkshire victory, although that draw was sandwiched by two defeats. Hampshire then won six-in-a-row and while pursued throughout by Yorkshire and Middlesex they came to their penultimate game against Derbyshire at Bournemouth knowing that if they won, or Yorkshire failed to beat Warwickshire, they would be Champions.

In the event both occurred, although for two days Derbyshire matched them. Then on Friday 1 September, Hampshire played throughout like Champions. Roy Marshall led the way with 86, two Hampshire men, Sainsbury (73) and Barnard (61) added 99 in just over an hour, and Ingleby-Mackenzie was able to declare setting Derbyshire 252 to win in three-and-a-quarter hours. Then the great Derek Shackleton got to work, as on a pitch offering little help to the bowlers he reduced Derbyshire to 52-8 (two for Alan Wassell). Shackleton finished with 6-39 and after a ninth wicket stand that doubled the score, Sainsbury took the last two quickly and the title was Hampshire’s.

It was an immense achievement for the modest shire county but when Yorkshire won the title again in 1962 & 1963 it seemed normal service had resumed. But 1963 saw the launch of the new one-day knock-out cup competition sponsored by Gillette, and was the first season with no distinction between amateur and professional cricketers.

In 1966 Roy Marshall was the first professional cricketer appointed as Hampshire’s captain; he had been required to turn his back on an international career with West Indies, to play county cricket, but by 1968 those restrictions were lifted when Barry Richards arrived at Hampshire, and scored 2,314 first-class runs at 48.21 – on uncovered pitches.

Derek Shackleton retired from full-time play with the county’s record of 2,669 first-class wickets but he returned in 1969 to play in the first year of the new 40-over Sunday (afternoon) League, won by Lancashire with Hampshire runners-up. County cricket was now a different world from 1961.