WHAT A GAME!

Without doubt the most exciting championship game I’ve every seen was in Sept 1995 between Middx and Leicestershire at Uxbridge.

Warwickshire had won the title the year before and on the morning of the penultimate round of matches, the table showed Warwick 287 pts, Middx 277. The game at Uxbridge was played Friday-Monday and by keeping back a couple of days of my holiday from my old company I was able to watch all four days. The morning of Fri 7^th Sept started with overcast conditions and rain was to wipe over 110 runs from the first 3 days.

Middx line up was: Weekes, Pooley, Ramprakash, Gatting, Carr, Brown, Dion Nash, Emburey, Feltham, Fraser and Tufnell.

Gatt won the toss and elected to bat as normal at Uxbridge. Through the showers we made 338, under par I thought, with Ramps scoring a superb 158 (he certainly seemed to love the ground)

Once again the weather badly interrupted the Leics. reply. And they were still batting towards the end of day three. With news filtering through that Warwick were on the brink of a big win over Derby, Gatting evidently got into negotiations with visiting skipper James Whittaker. The upshot was Leics declared  at 300-5 with Vince Wells top scoring with 124.

Thanks to some “declaration” bowling Middx raced to 212-2 from 35.3 overs, Ramps getting his second hundred of the match with 111 no. Gatt then declared setting the visitors, it seemed to us a very generous, target of 251 of minimum of 70 overs.

After an early spell from Frasier and Nash (2 overs from him) Emburey and Tufnell came onto bowl, and they would bowl 58.3 overs between them. A couple of early wickets fell and the visitors were 36-2, then a superb stand of 95, between Whittaker(51) and the late Hansie Cronje (53) for the 3^rd wicket looking like putting Leics. on their way to victory.

However our spinners worked their way through the batting so when the eighth wicket fell Leics. were 208, still 41 short. But the tail was determined to make us fight for victory, with Pierson and Brimson taking the score to 239 before the latter was bowled by Tufnell for 9.

Fourteen to win and the last man Alan Mullally coming to the crease. However, good running and the odd boundary meant the visitors had edged to 249 and it looked as though our outside chance for the title had gone. Then Tufnell bowled to Mullally who swept high towards the mid wicket boundary, Embers was there, was it going over his head? NO. he safely took the catch and we had won by 1 run!!!

The Cat did what can only be described as demented war dance before being engulfed by team mates; even JE punched the air in delight. As we left on a high there was an amazing buzz, strangers talking to each other, full of excitement What a day!

Sadly, in the end, it was to no avail as Warwick took 24 pts to our 21. This left them 15 points clear. Despite our best efforts we were unable to beat Somerset in our last match taking just 7 pts in a draw while Warwick thrashed Kent by an innings.

Final Table

Warwick    337

Middlesex  305

One other point of interest for that season was Mark Ramprakash scored 2147 runs at 93.34 scoring 10 centuries

http://uk.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1995/ENG_LOCAL/CC/R19/MIDDX_LEICS_CC_07-11SEP1995.html

http://uk.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1995/ENG_LOCAL/CC/R19/MIDDX_LEICS_CC_07-11SEP1995_MR