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Hampshire’s 249-run victory over Middlesex was more than just an April win in the County Championship.
Victory happened to equal the same number of victories throughout the entirety of last year’s red ball campaign.
After years of indecision and indirection across all formats, back-to-back wins has imparted a renewed sense of optimism amongst those at the club. More significantly, it’s signalled a statement of intent.
Their clinical dispatching of Middlesex emphasised the shift in mentality. The dominant win came on the back off an innings rout away to Leicestershire. Both wins marks a vast turnaround in fortune but also confidence.
Towards the back end of Hampshire’s summer last season, where the team bookended an emotionally fraught campaign with just one win in 10 T20 matches, all-rounder Liam Dawson spoke of the need to reassess. “It’s not good enough and we have to look at ourselves and the team.” Dawson further posited the weak body language of the players on the pitch, claiming “it had gone.”
The main bone of contention was the team’s shortcomings with the bat. Often they looked feeble and rudderless in their approach. Two games into the new season and five of the top six scoring hundreds – or in James Vince’s case, or double hundreds – Hampshire’s decision to reset during the winter looks to be a shrewd one.
The winter months offered Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove and director Giles White much-needed respite from the rut the team had found itself in. It enabled the two central decision makers to take stock, reflect and therein produce a strategy to elicit a transformation in on-field form.
Results on the pitch have been jarring when you consider the success the county have had on the international circuit. Under an affluent owner and encompassed by arguably the most aesthetically pleasing ground in England, Hampshire’s commercial appeal has increased tenfold before and after the success of hosting five World Cup matches in 2019.
Though Hampshire’s white ball form has tended to fluctuate erratically, very much taking the all or nothing approach, performances under the longest format of the game have laterally drifted. Confident prophecies quickly dissipate by the month of May and the side are usually left grubbing around for enough points to retain their Division One status.
Since being promoted in 2014, it would take four more years for Hampshire to ensure their safety in the country’s top division before the final day of the campaign. In 2019, they claimed their highest spot in 11 years, finishing third but never seeming in the running to challenge for the title.
Various players have come and gone in that time, some of whom are hovering around the international picture – take Reece Topley – others, meanwhile, have left under a cloud of controversy following the Royals decision to sign two South Africans on a Kolpak deal.
And yet, it has never directly correlated to semblances of success. Despite the subsequent overheads of playing host to a modernised, quaint setting of a stadium, expenditure costs are not cheap. Naturally, there is an expectation that performances on the pitch reflect their growing presence off it.
Winning just two red ball and two white ball games last season, that expectation had clearly not been met. Not even Indian Head Coach Ravi Shastri’s glowing review of Hampshire having the “best cricket facility on the UK circuit” offered much in the way of consolation. The picturesque charming settings was in paradox to the drab the team were serving up on the pitch.
Like most counties, the COVID-19 pandemic has left Hampshire looking precariously into their financial situation. The domestic calendar’s blue ribbon tournament of the Vitality T20 Blast as well as the inaugural edition of ‘The Hundred’ campaign being either played without fans or postponed, has left cavernous blotches in the financial accounts and annual turnover.
Events such as the centrepiece fixture against Sussex at home – loosely known as the ‘ElClassiccoast’ – have been without fans and more pertinently, without a sold-out stadium. With the lack of generated revenue, there has been even greater emphasis on Hampshire progressing on the cricket front.
Eight days into the season – seven, even, if you count the win inside three days against Leicestershire – so far, so good.
The manner of the two wins over Leicestershire and Middlesex have transformed fan opinion and bestowed a sense of belief that this team do have the inner resolve to go for the major domestic honours this season. It has also shown that decisions made in the winter are likely to pay off.
The likes of Liam Dawson, the man who admitted Hampshire had ‘been hammered’ last season, has returned following a lengthy spell of the sidelines with a ruptured Achilles. Bransgrove and White have also recruited astutely in their overseas signings, bringing in Pakistani Mohammad Abbas to dovetail with Kyle Abbott in the seam department.
Abbas’ control of line and length with the ball provides a consistent foreign export who can be relied upon throughout the slog of a County Championship season; something that’s not always been the case in recent times.
Experience with the ball is being underpinned by knowhow with the bat. Vince looks revitalised after a scintillating winter down under and continues to captain the side. Vince’s mammoth double hundred in the first game has left many wondering whether to put the rose-tinted spectacles back on when discussing his international future.
Former Kent skipper Sam Northeast has been steady if not spectacular during his two seasons on the south coast, but the club hope his new and improved contract extension will bring much-needed wisdom to an inexperienced and sometimes fragile top order across all formats. Northeast still holds ambitions to play for England and on a good batting surface at the Ageas, may be worth an outside bet for Joe Root’s overseas tours later this year.
Shrewd alterations and a recalibration in their approach has allowed Hampshire to rediscover their edge again. Doing it for a prolonged period of time is surely their next step.
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