Book tickets to the various music and other events hosted at Utilita Bowl
Visit Hampshire Cricket and Utilita Bowl's online store to get your hands on official replica and supporter kit as well as a range of other merchandise.
Following our qualification for the semi-final of the Royal London Cup - and the number of young players who featured throughout the group stage - Club historian Dave Allen has taken a look back at other impressive Hampshire youngsters in List A cricket
James Vince was 28 when he posted Hampshire’s highest-ever List A innings of 190, but if you trace the highest scores for the county back to 1973 you find that the record of 173* was set then by Gordon Greenidge in a B&H game, when he was just two days short of his 22nd birthday. Tom Prest has not (yet) broken Hampshire’s record but his 181 at Beckenham this year in the Royal London Cup places him second in the list of all-time innings on a day when he was less than half-way to his 20th birthday in March next year.
Tom Prest’s innings was just one of a remarkable set of performances in this year’s competition by a group of youngsters whose promise surely rivals that of the group of a dozen years ago, that included Vince, Liam Dawson, Danny Briggs, Chris Wood and Michael Bates.
Among other young batters to impress in previous List A knock-out cup matches was Jason Laney who age 23 scored 153 and shared an opening partnership of 269 with John Stephenson against Norfolk in the first round in 1996 and 24-year-old Adam Wheater whose 135 against his old county Essex in 2014 was not enough to win the game. Shane Watson had more success a month past his 24th birthday in 2005 when his 132 against Surrey took us to a remarkable victory on our way to the C&G Trophy. James Vince meanwhile was just 22 when he scored 129* in a nine-wicket victory at Chelmsford in 2013.
More recently in the Royal London Cup of 2018, on route to our last successful Lord’s Final, 21-year-old Joe Weatherley scored 105 against Kent, sharing a partnership of 133 with Brad Taylor who remains our youngest debutant in all three county formats. There have been a number of other youthful centurions in our List A league matches including John Francis, Chris Benham, Benny Howell and Derek Kenway. To date our other youngsters in this year’s competition have not reached three figures but they have produced some fine performances, not least the 6th wicket partnership of 104 by two twenty-year olds, Toby Albert and Fletcha Middleton, at Derby which effectively won the match and was a Hampshire record against that county.
The trio of young pace bowlers Scott Currie (21), John Turner (21) and Jack Campbell (22) have also impressed taking 49 wickets between them in this year’s games – Turner notably has taken five in an innings twice this year, when in sixty seasons of all List A cricket there have been just nine occasions when our bowlers have taken six or more – and only three of those men were not international cricketers. The youngest was 23-year-old Simon Renshaw, who took 6-25 against Surrey in a B&H game in 1997.
22-year-old Kevin Emery took 5-24 in the B&H Cup against Essex in 1982 and 21-year-old Stephen Andrew equalled that against the same opponents in 1987. John Turner’s 5-25 (one more run) came in August this year when he was just 18 days older than Stephen Andrew had been and Turner added 5-41 at Scarborough a few days later. Chris Wood was another 22-year-old when taking 5-22 on our way the Lord’s CB40 triumph of 2012. Among our wicketkeepers, Bobby Parks was just 21 when he set our List A record of five victims in an innings in 1980 and Derek Kenway one year older when he equalled that – both in List A league matches.
Some of these young players went on to greater things, others did not fulfil that early promise but all contributed to the cause, as have this year’s young players – we shall wish the crop of 2022 every success and long careers ahead.
