Saturday, January 12, 2008

Absolute Beginners

This was the first county game I ever saw, and therefore my introduction to first class cricket. I saw Rohan Kanhai make a hundred on the second day- I reckon there are plenty of worse ways to start your 'career'.

Looking through those two line-ups note that, even though England were playing a test against Australia at the time with Luckhurst, Knott and Underwood on duty, there were still fourteen past, present or future internationals on display.

By the looks of things, it seems like quite a good game. Presumably Warwickshire whittled Kent out on the third day leaving themselves just long enough to get the runs. I'd guess that at 65-4, Kent must have fancied their chances of a surprise win against the head, but the unlikely pairing of Amiss and Murray saw Warwickshire home.

Note the location - Hesketh Park, Dartford. At that time counties had enough first class games in their fixture list to ensure that the game was on display right around the county - rather than the one or two locations you see now. So, in that summer, Kent had home games at Maidstone, Folkstone, Dover, Dartford, Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury. These days it's only the last two that get to host county games.

1 comment:

David Barry said...

That was quite a run-chase - not only were they 4/65, but they scored at more than one a ball for 35 overs.

I'm hoping to take advantage of my time in France to hop over to London and watch a county game, before I head back to Australia in May. The standard mightn't be quite as high as back home, but there's something compelling about teams that have been playing cricket for 300 years.