Southampton (Northlands Road and the Ageas Bowl), Bournemouth, Basingstoke and Portsmouth have been the five venues for Yorkshire’s visits to Hampshire. Paul Dyson looks back at a match at the last-named ground which which contained two outstanding individual performances.
1960
Yorkshire 399-7dec (JB Bolus 146*, DB Close 102); Hampshire 191 (RE Marshall 70, JR Gray 54, FS Trueman 6-34) & 147 (H Horton 68*, FS Trueman 6-28). Yorkshire won by an innings and 61 runs.
Yorkshire had won the Championship in 1959 in dramatic style to end Surrey’s seven-year stranglehold on the title and their own 13-year wait for their 23rd Championship. It was Yorkshire’s most barren period since the official Championship began in 1890. Hampshire had finished the previous campaign in eighth place and were still awaiting their first title; they had begun the 1960 season with two wins and two defeats, Yorkshire winning two and losing one.
Yorkshire batted first (the result of the toss is not known) and their openers, Bryan Stott and Ken Taylor shared a stand of 62 before that latter was caught off Mervyn Burden for 35. This brought Brian Bolus to the crease and after Peter Sainsbury had bowled Stott for 47 he and Brian Close put together a stand of 151 for the defining passage of the innings. The runs came in only two hours and included the whole of Close’s 102 which contained eight fours and four sixes. Close was caught off Malcolm Heath to give the bowler the first of his three wickets and Phil Sharpe kept company with Bolus, who had just reached his own century, until the close of play, Yorkshire’s score being 318 for three.
On the second morning Bolus and Sharpe took their fourth-wicket stand to 88 before the latter was caught off Heath. Skipper Vic Wilson held himself back in the hope of acquiring some quick runs from Don Wilson and Fred Trueman but the ruse worked only partially – four wickets fell for 44 runs and so Wilson declared on 399 for seven. Bolus batted throughout the session and finished on 146 not out (15 fours). It was the first century of his first-class career.
Hampshire began better than Yorkshire had done, their opening stand being 118. Jimmy Gray (54) and Roy Marshall (70) were responsible for this although their progress was steadier than Yorkshire’s had been. Unfortunately, after this partnership all ten wickets then fell for the addition of only 73 runs. Trueman had not been successful in his opening spell but when he came back later he wreaked havoc with a spell of 10-5-11-6. Hampshire had no answer to his skill and the 16th wicket of the day was the first of Hampshire’s second innings, also to Trueman, after they had followed on and closed on seven for one.
The final day was more of the same, only worse; the hosts slipped to 30 for four. Henry Horton had dropped anchor, Danny Livingstone and Sainsbury stayed with him for a while but those three batsmen were the only ones to pass double figures. Trueman took the first three wickets and the last three, Horton having batted courageously and being left 68 not out, and finished with match figures of 12 for 62.
Yorkshire’s good form continued throughout the season; they won 17 of their 32 games and retained the Championship title. Hampshire slipped four places down to 12th but their time was to come very soon afterwards and the 1961 season saw the southern county, against all pre-season predicitons, capture the title for the first time in their history.
Man of the Match
Fred Trueman was at the hieght of his powers. In terms of wicket-aggregate it was to be the best season of his career, him finishing the first-class campaign with a tally of 175 victims – an astonishing total for a fast bowler. But his average of 13.98 was only enough for fourth place in the averages – behind Brian Statham (Lancashire), Les Jackson (Derbyshire) and Alan Moss (Middlesex), all also fast bowlers. Trueman and Statham opened the bowling for England in all five of that season’s Tests against South Africa.
