DOCUMENTING CHANGE: HAMPSHIRE’S CRICKET HISTORY
I am grateful for this opportunity to write about the historical work being undertaken at Hampshire Cricket as our contribution to a series on each of the counties in this journal.
At the end of the 2024 season, approaching my 75th birthday, I retired as the Historian, the public face of Hampshire Cricket, although as I shall reveal, that is not quite the end of my endeavours.
You will note that I name Hampshire Cricket. When I first became formally involved in preserving and presenting our history 30 years ago it was as a co-opted member of the Museum Sub-Committee of Hampshire County Cricket Club(HCCC), an organisation which ceased to exist shortly after our move to the then Rose Bowl, which held its inaugural first-class match in 2001. Since then Hampshire has been a limited company with members in name only and resembling rather more football season-ticket holders. The move from Northlands Road to the Bowl which now has its third full name (Utilita) in a quarter-of-a-century and the transfer of power from an elected committee to a Board makes our situation unique but our tale of heritage and history over that period might become more broadly applicable as we move into the days of 49%, Franchise take-overs and the like at other counties.
I am no economist or business expert so I will leave that tale to others but I can relate something of how at Hampshire we have approached the representation of our history in a context different both in terms of environment and management from that of any other members’ county club, with a 19th century ground.
I was a Hampshire member from my ‘junior’ days in 1961 but only became involved in the formal work on our history in the mid-1990s, after I offered the club the loan of a small but interesting collection of Hampshire cricket memorabilia. This led to an invitation to become a seconded member of the Museum Sub-Committee from the Archivist Neil Jenkinsonwhich was approved by the full committee to whom we were responsible. Other ‘Museum’ members back then were mostly also on our full committee, including our former amateur bowler and cricket chairman Charlie Knott, cricket historian Andrew Renshaw, Major Doulas Nation who once played a pre-war first-class match while serving in India and gentleman farmer Andrew Murdoch.
The 30+ years since then have been an ‘interesting’ experience as I have gone from being the ‘bright young(ish) thing’ of the 1990s to the occasionally grumpy senior Historian in recent years. Given all the changes that have occurred along the way our experience over those thirty yearsis surely unique among county clubs not least in terms of the most pressing project which has been to find ways of sharing our history with members, supporters and at the ground at least, visitors.
In my experience, the majority of cricket lovers love tales of the past but perhaps for most of them it is their past; the players, grounds, matches, seasons or series that have had most impact on their cricket-loving lives that provide the material of their memories. Cricket is a very rich source of such memories since it is accompanied by a plethora of facts and the process, entirely understandable, often affords great pleasure - especially when shared, since more than say football, watching cricket, in particular the longer forms, allows plenty of time for conversations.
The challenge for a county Historian is to acknowledge this particular form of engagement with the past, allowing the ground and publications to become a canvas on which to paint this picture. But should it be more than that? If the engagement I have described so far is to be seen as a kind of (often well-informed) nostalgia how is that different from ‘History’ and what are the implications of such a distinction for what is made public? What forms should be used to make the past public and hopefully relevant today?
When we arrived at the Rose Bowl on D Day 2000 for a 2nd XI game on the Nursery Ground the main pavilion and ground were still building sites and for financial reasons the pavilionremained incomplete for some time – with two more stands and the hotel added some years later. While there was very little money to create displays there was at least a blank canvas on which to work.
When the 2nd XI played that first match we were still Hampshire County Cricket Club with the historians reportingto the full Committee. It is perhaps interesting to reflect on the people who were then running affairs, for they all lived in the county and in many cases were, like Neil Jenkinson and me, Hampshire born-and-bred. The Chairman Brian Ford from Bournemouth was a third generation Hampshire Committee man, Bill Hughes, a main driving force on the new ground was a former Hampshire Colt and member of Hampshire Hogs CC, Chris Ayling the club’s GP was from Portsmouth, the Chief Exec, Tony Baker was a well-known Southampton cricketer who had played for the 2nd XI, while recent Cricket Chairmen Charlie Knott and Jimmy Gray were successfulSouthampton-born Hampshire cricketers. There were others with similar local backgrounds,
Does that matter? I am not sure but I think it is worth asking the question at the moment when we hear that Hampshire might well be bought by an Indian Franchise and it is a question that has exercised me in a different respect in recent years. The main historical project at Hampshire can be traced at least back to the mid-18th century with the inaugural first-class matches often involving Hampshire/Hambledon and a century later came the formation of the County Cricket Club (1863) and its successor Hampshire Cricket plc. But our new ground has in recent years also hosted two other professional organisations not called Hampshire: The Southern Brave in the Men’s Hundred competition and the Southern Vipers women’s sides.
Their performances are these days recorded in the Hampshire Handbook with which I have been involved for many years although that part is dealt with by other people. Around the ground there are displays about the Vipers which they curate themselves and I have never had a conversation with anyone about whether they think the role of Hampshire’sArchivist/Historian should embrace these new formats and different team names. Should I continue to follow in detail the performances of Vince, Dawson and others in the Hundred, even when Dawson is playing for a team called London Spirit? If so to what extent? What is my role or that of the recently re-formed Hampshire Cricket Heritage (all men) in preserving and sharing the histories of regional women’s cricket, disabled sides, junior teams or the Academy, who this year won the Southern League for the first time?
I have generally avoided engaging with these implicit questions, perhaps because there is always something else to deal with but maybe betraying my own areas of expertise and bias against the Hundred and non-county names for sides – none of that a secret! In retirement I can choose my projects but those questions remain for my successors and others elsewhere. I wonder for example, what view my colleagues at Sussex take of the notion that their county is part of this thing called ‘Southern Brave’? Do they maintain the records for Mills, Archer and perhaps the side? What is the role of a County Cricket Historian in the second quarter of the 21stCentury? As an historian must I always take the disinterested position even in a project in which I have a life-long emotional investment?
I think it is well-known that our early years at the Rose Bowl were to say the least precarious financially and while there was very little money to create displays there was at least thatblank canvas on which to work and that was often an interesting project.
In the winter of 2000/1 we brought everything across from Northlands Road which had been rapidly reduced to a demolition site and much of our memorabilia was stored in a Portacabin where the car park now stands. Initially an outside company was brought in to frame lots of photographs and hang them around the ground but they knew nothing of our history and did this simply on aesthetic grounds. With others I have spent most of the last 20 years moving them, firstly to create some historical coherence but secondly to pursue an alternative more contemporary aesthetic, in line with the Bowl’s 21st century architecture. To be specific, wherever possible we took a thematic approach to wall displays removing old wooden frames and producing large Perspex displays about trophy successes, leading Test cricketers, notable other teams and individuals. With little money we held book sales from members’ donations and pursued sponsorship from supporters’ groups or more modest amounts from individual supporters. I particularly enjoyed succeeding in renaming the Atrium in honour of John Arlott, using the exposed white iron girders to display his quotes about the players he knew and loved, from Lord Tennyson through to the 1970s trophy winners. Each quote on its own girder was sponsored by a supporter.
Away from the ground we created one or two exhibitions for other sites, notably marking the 150th anniversary of the formation of the club in 2013 at the Hampshire County Archives in Winchester and this year the anniversary of the first known match in Portsmouth at the city’s Central Library. These displays were designed like the Perspex boards but less expensively on foamboard and for some years the 150th boards were displayed in the Atrium – a history of 150 years of men’s county cricket. They were removed a couple of years ago which means that these days it is not so easy to find much acknowledgement around the ground of the great achievements of Wynyard & Poore, Mead & Brown, Kennedy & Newman and others beyond living memory.
In the past two or three years a new group of volunteers has arrived to succeed Stephen Saunders, Terry Crump and me in the re-formed Hampshire Cricket Heritage. Under Chairman Richard Griffiths, John Winter, Glen Williams and Ray Stubbington have done a very fine job of properly organising the Archive which houses a Library, started post-war by Desmond Eagar, as well as many bats, balls, caps, stumps, trophies, photographs and scorecards. Both the latter have also been ‘digitised’ for easier use, not least on the brand new website at
https://www.hampshirecountycricketheritage.co.uk/
One of our main projects for the winter, led by Ray, is to update the players’ A-Z which I published in two editions a few years ago and add that to the website for all to see. Ray is particularly adept at searching out information about births, deaths and other details online where there are of course so may remarkable resources. For myself, I give thanks constantly for the wonder that is Cricket Archive but at Hampshire we have another volunteer, Tigger Miles, whose statistical site is equally valuable to us:
One of our key challenges has always been displaying the fascinating artefacts that we hold such as Wynyard’s record-breaking bat from 1897, ‘Butch’ White’s hat-trick ball of 1961, Barry Richard’s Champions cap of 1973 or the last (white) ball ever used at Northlands Road, signed and dated by Shane Warne. As Kit Harris noted in the 2024 edition of Wisden we have no museum or room of any kind in which to display such artefacts, so the Heritage website and a succession of shorter booklets - £5 each and numbering seven so far with more planned – have an important role. But how we would love to display more of our possessions – even if a formal museum has too many economic and organisational implications right now. For the time being, solid objects tend to appear at specific events including public talks.
So, what might come next? My first serious encounter with Hampshire cricket history at least 65 years ago was the ‘official’ history of the county club (1957) which stretched from Hambledon through about 200 years to the late 1950s and was written by three notable Hampshire historians, Harry Altham, Desmond Eagar and John Arlott, assisted in the statistics by Roy Webber. It was concerned almost entirely with men’s first-class cricket including the ‘great’ games at Hambledon but If we assume that the sharing of county histories is now broadening considerably beyond that focus, there are I think four key questions to be borne in mind as county historians or history groups plan future projects:
What is the anticipated or intended audience?
Who is communicating?
In what media and formats?
Who & what is being represented?
Addressing those questions can help us maintain and develop inclusive strategies for sharing the most wonderful histories with growing numbers of cricket enthusiasts and to finish I would like to give particular consideration to one particular group of ‘enthusiasts’ who seem to get quite a bit of media attention these days but are not obviously engaged in preserving and producing the histories of our game.
I am fairly typical of the breed of current cricket historians in age, background and disposition as part of that shrinking group that can recall watching county cricket when it consisted only of first-class matches – indeed I watched for ten years before there was more than the occasional limited-overs Gillette Cup match. The influence of those formative years is strong in my endeavours and that is one reason why it is time to move on and hand over.
But in the longer term, I am thinking of the so-called ‘new’ audience of families and particularly young people who we are told have been attracted to cricket in recent years. There might be among them and across two or three generations,cricket enthusiasts who could be encouraged to enjoy the past – however recent – alongside the present and ensure that the future for the historical project is secure, whatever its subject matter, whatever its forms and audience. I wonder how we might ensure that the future of cricket’s many histories is in safe hands in our digital, AI and multi-format future?
Dave Allen
September 2024