on this day

posted by John Winn

Circumstances prevented me getting to The Riverside yesterday but texts from one of my oldest friends, Alan Pinkney kept me abreast of another exciting finish and Durham's eventual victory, their fourth in as many games in the championship, a remarkable revival by any standard which has come about under the captaincy of Paul Collingwood. Both Collingwood and Mustard, the man he replaced have gone on record saying that they do not attribute Durham's climb up the table to the change in captaincy. How do you spell phooey? The hand of Collingwood is clearly evident in the team selections with the emphasis on control in the bowlers, hence no Harmison,  and the dropping of Blackwell laying down a marker for what is expected of the players in terms of fitness.

Heavy rain early this morning convinced me that today was also best spent at home and I gave some time this afternoon to sorting out various things relating to cricket watching and whilst doing this I thought it might be of interest to readers if I referred to matches I have seen 'on this day' in the past.
So to start I refer back twenty three years to Thursday August 24th 1989 when I attended my first game at Queen's Park ,Chesterfield and a remarkable day's cricket from a championship match between Derbyshire and Yorkshire.

I was living in Sussex at the time and had spent the previous night staying at my brother's at nearby Dronfield. The championship at the time consisted of a mixture of three and four day matches and this fell into the latter category. Given that twenty one wickets fell on the first day only the loss of all of the second day and most of the third meant that the fourth day was needed. Derbyshire won the toss and put Yorkshire in and bowled them out for 136 only to be bowled out in turn for 102. Leading wicket takers were Simon Base for Derbyshire and Paul Jarvis for Yorkshire.By close of play Yorkshire's second innings stood at 39 for 1 with Moxon and Blakey at the crease and the many supporters who had made the short trip must have felt after such an eventful day that Yorkshire held the advantage.

When play resumed after lunch on Saturday Yorkshire fared only a little better however, and with David Byas top scorer (40) they managed 184 all out setting Derbyshire 219 to win, which they did for the loss of 7 wickets (Arnie Sidebottom 5 for 92) Skipper Kim Barnett top scored with 74. This was Derbyshire's first home win over Yorkshire for 32 years. Other names of interest from the scorecard include West Indian fast bowler and TV commentator Ian Bishop, Chris Adams, and John Morris from the Derbyshire eleven. Yorkshire were captained by Phil Carrick and might feel they were unlucky when Kevin Sharp had to retire hurt in the second innings.

Man of the match was undoubtedly Simon Base with figures of 12 for 153. At the end of the season Derbyshire finished 6th= in the championship, only one division then of course, and Yorkshire were only held up by Glamorgan. Another winter of discontent followed.

Also on the 24th of August that year Australia rattled up 325 for 3 as England hunted leather in the wide open spaces of The Oval: runs for Taylor, Boon, Border and Jones. England's pace attack: Igglesden, Small, Pringle and Capel, probably not our finest.

That was the last county cricket I saw that season. Only 3 days earlier I had been at Hastings for the last first class match at the wonderful Central Ground with Sussex taking on Middlesex. I was there on the second day when a Mike Gatting century rescued the visitors.