Hampshire's First Championship

posted by John Winn

This photograph popped up on twitter last week and its description leaves several questions unanswered. It is not dated, but must be 1961, only one player is named and we are left to identify the ground which is Dean Court, Bournemouth. With assistance and common sense the line up from the left is Peter Sainsbury, Leo Harrison, Butch White*, CI-M, ?, Danny Livingstone, ?,?,?. 

Tracking down the match is a little more tricky. Given that it is at Bournemouth and it was there on September 1st that a victory over Derbyshire clinched, after 66 years of trying, their first championship then this seems the most likely occasion. Hampshire batted first so it is not the first morning, Derbyshire were 23 for 1 over night, the clock if a little slow suggests this was the start of a day's play, and Hampshire began the third day at the crease which reinforces the idea that it was Thursday August 31st, the second of the three days. If so, the unidentified or missing players are Marshall, Gray, Horton,Barnard, Wassell and Shackleton. Marshall seems to be missing or obscured for he always wore glasses and I think I would recognise Derek Shackleton. 

Things become a little more complicated if we think it might have been some other match at Dean Court that year for Hampshire played six championship matches at the lovely ground in that historic season including one starting the day after the championship was won when Yorkshire, stung perhaps by surrendering the title to Hants, were victors by 58 runs, a century for Bolus and 12 wickets for Illingworth. Yorkshire batted first so it does not seem unreasonable that the photographer took this opportunity to capture the new champions. Hampshire were unchanged. Wisden attributed Yorkshire's failure to claim a hat-trick of titles to inconsistent batting for which even their excellent attack could not compensate. 

In Peter Wynne-Thomas's history of Hampshire County Cricket Club there is an excellent double page spread picture of the 1961 championship side with names but even with this to hand the quality of the photo at the top of this posting has not helped me to identify the full Hants' XI. Perhaps some of our readers will be able to help. 

* One Hampshire devotee believes this to be Henry Horton, not Butch White. 

Thanks to Tony we can now identify all ten players, whole or part, on the photograph.

from left to right Peter Sainsbury, Leo Harrison, Henry Horton, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, Jimmy Gray, Danny Livingstone, Roy Marshall (obscured) Butch White, Mike Barnard, Alan Wassell, Derek Shackleton (missing from the copy I posted on Monday.

I should have trusted the man who said he recognised 'his old friend Henry Horton' rather than the man who said third from left was Butch White.