Hampshire Cricket History

Hampshire lost the first match of the season at Derby but won the other three. At Southampton Penn took 14 wickets in the match for Kent but they lost by 236 runs. Hampshire then beat Derbyshire at Southampton in late July even though William Mycroft had match figures of 17-103 for Derbyshire. Of the two other Hampshire wickets to fall, Mycroft caught one. He was a left-arm bowler who apparently bowled fast but also spun the ball – an interestingly dangerous combination. He enjoyed considerable success that year with Derbyshire and MCC

In 1895 Walter Mead (also WM) took 17 wickets for Essex against Hampshire and these are the only two occasions when a bowler has taken 17 wickets in a first-class match and finished on the losing side.

In mid-August, AW Ridley (see 1875) scored 104 as Hampshire beat Kent by innings at Faversham. Ridley also took 10-113 and Tate 9-121 in the match. With three victories in four matches, this was Hampshire’s best season before they entered the Championship in 1895

W Beach would be President for the next decade while the Club’s official history (1957) records how the appointment of Clement Booth as captain and secretary “seems to have provided the first element of rescue”. He had won his Cambridge blue in the 1860s then tried to organise the county side in his native Lincolnshire. In the early 1870s he moved near Arlesford and began contributing to his new county.

In 1875, he arranged four matches, home and away against Kent and Sussex. The two home matches were played at Winchester (on two separate grounds, Riddings and St Cross/Greenjackets’ Ground) rather than Southampton, where the Antelope Ground was now called Southampton Cricket Ground.

There were three defeats by an innings but victory at Hove where AW Ridley came from Oxford University to make his county debut. He top-scored with 54, took 6-35 and 6-38 finishing the match with a hat-trick, four wickets in five balls. Sussex collapsed from 83-4 to 93 all out, losing by 28 runs. Sadly, business meant that he played only ten matches for the county – he played his last inter-county match for Hampshire two years later and once against MCC in 1878. Later he played for Middlesex.

The early 1870s were a pretty bleak period for the newly formed Hampshire County Cricket Club. In 1870 Hampshire played just two matches both curiously against Lancashire (home and away). They lost by 10 wkts at Old Trafford in July and the northerners won again next month in Southampton in a low-scoring match:

Lancashire 115 & 113

Hampshire 111 & 77

In 1873 Hampshire played against 18 players representing ‘Hampshire Colts’ but the match was not first-class. That is the only recorded Hampshire match of any kind from 1871-1874 inclusive found on Cricket Archive. However in his History (1988) Wynne-Thomas notes a few matches:

1871 v Gentlemen of Devon at the Torquay Cricket Festival

1872 An amateur side played Gentlemen of Sussex at Winchester College

1873 Gentlemen of Hampshire home & away v Sussex. They beat Sussex away but only having borrowed OE Winslow to make up their numbers – he scored the only half-century. There was also an end-of-season trial match Gentlemen v Players, on the Antelope Ground

1874 XVI of Hampshire v Yorkshire United at Lyndhurst

There were frequent resignations, changes of officers and poorly attended meetings. In 1874 a meeting considered whether the club “shall be dissolved or not”.

Taken today (22 January 2013). Hotel progressing but no central heating yet

In Bournemouth (then in Hampshire) the Dean Park Ground was first laid out. There had been changes at the top with WW Beach as President and AH Wood as Secretary. two first-class matches were played and lost.

Clearer signatures in those days! (this from 1932/3)

Nice piece from Andrew Hignell (Glamorgan scorer) on the Cricketer Daily site today:

The prolific Pujara also featured in another unusual record in the first week of the new year as on January 6 both he and fellow Indian Taruwar Kohli each completed triple hundreds in domestic matches, with Pujara’s 352 coming against Karnataka at Rajkot and Kohli’s unbeaten 300 made against Jharkhand at Jamshedpur.

Apparently, this was the first time since July 28, 1937 that two triple hundreds were recorded on the same day in first-class cricket. On that day seventy-six years ago Lancashire’s Eddie Paynter made 322 against Sussex at Hove, while along the south coast Hampshire’s Dick Moore posted 316 against Warwickshire at Dean Park in Bournemouth.

A couple of years ago Dick’s son told me that he was given out LBW in the last over – a very dubious decision apparently but the umpires had seen enough. He was last man out. His record remains to this day although John Crawley (twice) and Michael Carberry were both poised to beat it in recent years

An Australian Aboriginal side toured England through the summer and into Autumn playing many games (see: http://www.cricketweb.net/blog/features/476.php)

They played three matches in Hampshire. The first was in Southsea at the East Hants Cricket Ground against East Hampshire on 15/16 June. The hosts won by an innings and there was a sad element in that one of the tourists, known as ‘King Cole’, contracted a lung infection and died before playing another match.

The tourists returned to that ground on 5/6 October and won by an innings and 61 runs before moving on to Day’s Antelope Ground on the following two days where the match against the Gentlemen of Hampshire was drawn. For the visitors “Twopenny” took 9-17 while after two days, the Aboriginals were 49-3, just 29 short of victory. The two sides bowled 234 overs in the two days.

(In 1867 Hampshire had played just three first-class matches, all against Kent, but in 1868 they played none – indeed we have no record of any matches played by a full Hampshire side although some Hampshire cricketers participated in the matches against the Aboriginals).

The appropriately named Charles Young made his debut for Hants v Kent at Gravesend in June at 15 yrs 130 days. Until 2011, it was an English first-class record and it remains a record for the youngest debutant in a first-class match between two counties. Young appeared in three matches v Kent that season who were now added to the small group of south-eastern counties that Hampshire played against in the mid-19th century.

Young played for Hampshire against Kent in 1885 (Tonbridge) his final first-class match, as Hampshire were thereafter regarded as ‘second class’ until admitted to the Championship in 1895. Young is above in the team of 1886 (standing, far right). He played his final game for the county at the relatively new Northlands Road headquarters in 1890. He died in Lancashire in 1913.