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Hampshire Cricket Historian Dave Allen continues his 'From The Archive' content series with a look at Hampshire's history with Warwickshire
'From The Archive' is a new content series in collaboration with Hampshire Cricket Historian, Dave Allen.
The series sees Dave dig into the archives around each of Hampshire's Specsavers County Championship fixtures, this instalment centres around Hampshire's history with Warwickshire.
Hampshire County Cricket Club played its inaugural first-class match in 1864 v Sussex, and in the same year on the same Antelope Ground in Southampton the Gentlemen of Hampshire beat the Gentlemen of Warwickshire by 201 runs. Our team included a number of first-class players including the Ede brothers and our first Aussie JC Lord. What’s fascinating about the result is that we achieved that despite following on, after CF Lucas scored a century for Hampshire.
I am sure that many of you know about our most remarkable Championship victory which came at Edgbaston in 1922, when we were bowled out for 15, followed on, yet beat Warwickshire by 155 runs. The two counties did not play first-class matches until we joined the County Championship in 1895, since when we have played them fairly regularly, except in some recent years when we were in different divisions.
We won fine victories against them in our two Championship-winning seasons. In mid-August 1961 at Southampton, we took a one run first innings lead thanks to a century by Mike Barnard who shared a century stand with Leo Harrison, after which Derek Shackleton added 6-36 to his first innings 5-88, as we won by eight wickets.
We met just once in 1973, at Coventry, where the great Barry Richards scored 240 as we declared on 396-7. Richards was out with the score on 370 having hit 38 x fours and three sixes in what remained his highest score for Hampshire. Warwickshire, 223 all out, followed-on but could not emulate our historic achievements and with Tom Mottram taking 6-63, they left us just 37 to win. We managed that although not before Bob Willis took 3-16 - but we were on our way to the title.
We might have been in a similar position in 2005 when we ended runners-up to Champions Nottinghamshire but our trip to the delightfully named Swan’s Nest Lane Ground in Stratford-on-Avon ended in a 10-wicket defeat. Shane Warne took six wickets but so too did our former overseas player Zimbabwean Heath Streak – now playing for our opponents.
We did of course have our revenge later that season when we beat Warwickshire in our first Lord’s Final for 13 years, we reached our next one in 2007 beating them in the semi-final at the Rose Bowl and then beat them at Lord’s again with that last-ball thriller in 2012. But it would be rather delightful to write of another Championship victory on our way to the Championship!
