From The Archive: Plenty In Reserve

Hampshire have been blessed by many fine historians since John Nyren recounted his memories of the great Hambledon side almost 200 years ago. Nyren of course was a player, and the son of a more famous father, Richard who was the heart of Hambledon cricket and also landlord of the Bat & Ball.

Since then many Hampshire cricketers have written accounts of their time with the county, including Lionel Tennyson, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, Roy Marshall, Barry Richards, Gordon Greenidge, and more recently Robin Smith, Mark Nicholas and Michael Bates. Generally, the bowlers including Hesketh-Pritchard, CB Llewellyn and Derek Shackleton have had to rely on others to recount their exploits.

In 1957, two men EDR (Desmond) Eagar and HS (Harry) Altham both of whom played for Hampshire as amateurs, got together with the great Hampshire journalist and broadcaster John Arlott and statistician Roy Webber to produce our first ‘official’ history. In that same year, Hampshire met Oxford University in the Parks and gave first-class debuts to two young men, reserve wicketkeeper Colin Roper (his only first-class appearance) and batsman Bernard Harrison.

‘Bernie’ was born in Worcester and had played for their 2^nd XI as a teenager, with a half-century against Northants 2^nd XI when they included a promising fast bowler, Frank Tyson, but ‘Bernie’ settled in Basingstoke, played for the town’s cricket team (and with Phil Bichard wrote their history), and became a teacher.

As a professional sportsman, he played cricket with Hampshire from 1957-1962 but as a top order batsman his path was blocked by the best years of Marshall, Gray and Horton. He also played football for a number of teams including ‘Saints’ and Crystal Palace.

For Hampshire, five of his first eight matches, spanning five seasons, were against Oxford University, and in 1961 he scored his only first-class century against them at Portsmouth. That was in a run of three matches in our title-winning season when he deputised for the injured Roy Marshall. In the two Championship matches he scored 90 runs in the four innings, then it was back to the reserves, but he was one of our ‘Champions’.

He had another opportunity in 1962 but retired hurt at Derby and returning in August, his best of 34 in three matches was not sufficient to prolong his career, so, approaching his 28^th birthday his chance was gone. He did nonetheless continue to play for the 2^nd XI for another six years and by the end of that decade his aggregate of 2,718 runs in the 2^nd XI Championship put him at the top of that list (followed by Bob Caple and Geoff Keith).

I know this because ‘Bernie’ became Hampshire 2^nd XI’s statistician and in the Archive, we hold his detailed and extensive records of their players and matches going beyond the launch of the 2^nd XI Championship in 1959, when incidentally Danny Livingstone was their top scorer. In later life, ‘Bernie’ filled exercise books with hand-written records of the 2^nd XI into this century, pretty much until his death age 71, in 2006.

From Bernie’s work, I can for example tell you that our leading scorer in the 1970s was Andy Murtagh, in the 1980s it was Tony Middleton – also overall top to the point where the records end – and in the 1990s Rupert Cox. And the bowlers? In 1959, it was ‘Butch’ White followed by Alan Wassell (1960s), Tim Tremlett (1970s), Steven Andrew (1980s) and Darren Flint (1990s), while Raj Maru tops the overall list with 223 wickets.

That is no more than a brief taste of the extensive work ‘Bernie’ carried out. He did not quite manage the batting career he hoped for, but he has left his legacy and deserves to be recognised as one of Hampshire’s most assiduous of historical statisticians.