Dave Allen: Knock Out Cups: v Yorkshire

2022 is the 60^th season of single innings, limited-overs matches between first-class counties. Over those years the matches, always scheduled for one day but sometimes extended or shortened by weather, have been contested over various formats with overs consisting of 65, 60, 55, 50, 45 or 40 per side. They were the first regular county competitions to carry the names of sponsors of which there have been many. Despite all these variations the matches are together known as List A to distinguish them from first-class or Twenty 20 games.

From the formal establishment of the County Championship in 1890 until the end of the 1960s, Yorkshire were the supreme county. Allowing for the war years they won the County Championship 29 times, around 50%, and otherwise usually finished in the top two or three. The Gillette Cup knock-out competition started in 1963 and they won that too, in 1965 and 1969. But then English cricket changed dramatically; the other 16 counties signed overseas stars while Yorkshire resisted, picking only those from inside their borders, while the introduction of the Sunday League and second knock-out cup changed the balance of competitions. In the 50+ years since Yorkshire’s cup win of 1969, they have won just three more Championships and three more ‘white-ball’ competitions.

Against Hampshire they have played 45 List A league and cup games, winning 20, but losing 24, with one no result. Oddly too they have only three times reached a score of 250 in all those matches (best of 264-2 in 1995) and all three were in List A league games, never in the knock-out competitions. By contrast, Hampshire’s best against Yorkshire came at home in 2018 when our 348-9 in the RL Cup Semi-Final took us to another Lord’s triumph. James Vince with 171 – our best ever against Yorkshire – took us to victory by 107 runs.

In knock-out matches we met them first at Bradford in the 2^nd round of the Gillette Cup in 1974, losing by 41 runs but three years later at the same stage in Bournemouth we reversed that result thanks to Trevor Jesty (69) and John Rice (5-35). In 1980, there was a seven wicket Yorkshire win in the quarter-final at Southampton with an unbeaten partnership of 142 by Athey and Love, while Metcalfe (93*) led Yorkshire to another quarter-final win in the B&H Cup at Leeds in 1987

A Nat West quarter-final victory for Hampshire at Southampton in 1990 was against the single-handed efforts of our future recruit Peter Hartley with 5-46 & 52 for the visitors (Malcolm Marshall 4-17) but a year later at Leeds we were dismissed for just 50 in 27.2 overs, losing by 189 runs – it is our third lowest all-out total in List A and the lowest in a knock-out cup match. We won by eight wickets at home in 1994 (Middleton 63*) and then came the 1999 ‘Super Cup’ – a one year experiment which was anything but ‘Super’. In our first game, we played Yorkshire at Headingley, posted 187-9 (Laney 41) in 55 overs and Yorkshire got them in the 39^th over with nine wickets to spare (David Byas 104*).

In 2005 we played Yorkshire at the Rose Bowl in the semi-final of the C&G Trophy. The night before, Yorkshire arrived late from a Roses Match, stayed in Botley and got caught in traffic on their way to the ground. They batted, reached 197-9 in 50 overs and a century by Sean Ervine (which he repeated in the final) took us home by 8 wickets with 10 overs to spare. At Lord’s, we beat Warwickshire.

Despite 91* from Jimmy Adams, we lost to Yorkshire in the 2014 RL Cup (Rashid 5-33), since when there has been just Vince’s super show in 2018. Now we visit Scarborough for the last match in the RL Cup group stages and while we have played List A matches at Bradford, Hull, Huddersfield, Leeds and Middlesbrough, this will be our first trip to the Yorkshire resort.