Born On This Day: 29th September

Mark Nicholas

Mark Nicholas will be remembered fondly as a flamboyant and successful captain and a fine batsman. He was born in London in 1957, played for Hampshire’s 2nd XI in 1977, made his first-class debut v Oxford University in 1978 and then his Championship debut in 1979.

In 1982 he passed 1,000 runs for the first of ten seasons and two years later he took over as captain. Mark scored almost 7,000 runs in limited-overs cricket, and in the shorter format led Hampshire to the Sunday League title in 1986, then at last to Lord’s Finals, initially in 1988 when we beat Derbyshire with Mark at the wicket.

He led Hampshire to the Nat West Final in 1991 but missed the game with a broken arm sustained in the previous game, but he was back at Lord’s in 1992 as we won the B&H Cup again. Mark retired at the end of the 1995 season after one of the most successful periods in our history, and has since pursued a very successful international media career.

Michael Carberry

Michael Carberry was born in Croydon in 1980 and after a few years with Surrey and Kent he came to Hampshire in 2006 and became a very fine left-handed opening batsman - one of our finest players in all formats for the next decade. He enjoyed ‘white ball’ successes in the T20 in 2010 & 2012, and in the latter season his thrilling 68 from 36 balls at a Hove semi-final took Hampshire to Lord’s and our 40-over Final victory over Warwickshire.

He made his Test debut for England in a victory v Bangladesh in March 2010, and two-and-a-half years later Michael opened with Alastair Cook in Australia when his 281 runs in 10 innings compared favourably with most of his colleagues, but not enough for him to retain his place.

On two occasions, he struggled with serious illness and having recovered in 2011 he participated in two record partnerships - 373 with Jimmy Adams for the second wicket at Taunton, while just before that, he and Neil McKenzie posted a mammoth 523 for the third wicket v Yorkshire.

When Hampshire declared Michael on 300*, was only 16 runs from Hampshire highest-ever innings. He moved briefly to Leicestershire at the end of his career but he will be remembered as one of the toughest and most entertaining of Hampshire batsmen. Since then he has done some cricket media work and is also establishing a new career as an artist.

A number of other Hampshire cricketers were born on this day: LG (Lothian) Bonham-Carter (b 1858), Algernon Lushington (b 1847), Stuart Milburn (b 1972) and RB (Roland) Proud (born 1919).