e-Magazines

This is the place to find copies of the E-Magazines entitled "In Safe Hands" 

Blelow is the latest edition sent out in March 2024

Christmas and a very successful cricket watching New Year.

Cricket and Football talents 

(by Richard Griffiths, Director, Hampshire Cricket Heritage Ltd) 

In the wake of losing our great sports all-rounder Mike Barnard I  thought it appropriate to consider two of the Hampshire first-class  cricketers who have also played football. In this edition it feels right to  start with a brief Mike Barnard summary and another professional  

footballer who shared our County Championship triumph of 1961 with  Mike. Mike Barnard played football for his hometown club, Portsmouth,  at the top level. In 1953 his debut in a 1-1 draw against Tottenham, was followed by a six-season association with Pompey, making 123 appearances and scoring 26 goals. 

At Hampshire he made 276 first-class appearances, between 1952 and  1966, amassing 9314 runs, including 6 centuries. In 1961, Mike played 13 County Championship matches and scored 558, averaging 29.36.  His one century in the season came against Warwickshire in a vital mid  August win. Warwickshire batted first (343-9 declared) with Derek Shackleton taking 5 wickets. Hampshire were struggling at 140-5 when  Mike came to the wicket. His unbeaten 114, including 101 for the eighth wicket with Leo Harrison, enabled a one run lead declaration. Shack took a further 6 wickets as  Warwickshire were dismissed for only 125. Hampshire kept the bandwagon rolling towards our first  County Championship, by meeting the target with only two wickets down. Interestingly, Henry Horton swapped cricket for football and then returned to cricket again. He  became a cricketer when he joined his brother Joe’s county of Worcestershire. In a total of 11 games  for them (1946 – 1949), he scored just 129 runs (highest score 21), averaging 8.06. 

He played football professionally for Blackburn Rovers (92 matches and five goals, 1946-50),  Southampton (75 matches, 11 goals, 1951-53) and reached the peak of his career when playing for  Bradford Park Avenue (27, 1954). For those that know me there is a definite bias in the latter half of  the previous sentence !!! It was a football transfer which brought him to Southampton, signing for the club record fee (£10,  000) in the 1951 soccer close season. Before the 1951-52 soccer season, the Southampton  footballers played a few games of cricket on the county ground to vary training. Arthur Holt was  impressed and seeds were sown. Arthur managed to persuade Henry to play for Hampshire and at  30 years old, he made his first-class debut in 1953.He played until 1967 and his career aggregate  of 21,536 runs (averaging 33.49) puts him sixth in the Hampshire all-time list, after Mead, Marshall,  Brown, Gray and Arnold. Horton played a crucial part in  1961, scoring 2,069 Championship runs, averaging  35.63, with 3 centuries. These include a vital 141 in an August win at Derby. Time and again he played the crucial innings in tight matches. He celebrated the title by hitting his career best 160 not out for the Champion County against the Runners-up, Yorkshire, at Scarborough. Mike Barnard, said of Henry Horton: "A great sense of humour, he liked the ladies but never married,  straight as a die, solid as a rock."

Of course, there were other footballers in the 1961 Champion  side, Bernard (Bernie)  Harrison, Arthur Holt (Coach), Henry Horton and Jimmy Gray.