Kim’s Derbyshire rocked the Aussies
ACTION was needed when Derbyshire failed to win a Championship match in 2016 so the board turned to a man who had been there and done it. During his career with the county from 1979-98 as an aggressive right-hand batsman who played in four Test matches, three of them in the heat of an Ashes series, Kim Barnett scored more runs (23,854) and made more hundreds (53) than anyone in the club’s history. He became their youngest-ever captain – 22 years 315 days – in 1983 and led the team in more matches than anyone before or since until he stood down in 1995. He was a member of the 1981 NatWest Trophy-winning side and skippered the side to the Benson & Hedges Cup final in 1988, going on to win it in 1993 as well as the Sunday League in 1990. His team reached third place in the 1991 Championship and he was in the side which finished runners-up in 1996 – their highest position since winning the title in 1936. His aggregate in limited-overs matches is another county record and he enjoyed further glory in Lord’s finals with Gloucestershire. With Barnett as Derbyshire’s director of cricket (later cricket advisor) the coaching set-up was streamlined. Genuine pace was introduced into the attack. His sudden resignation from this position on 2 July came as a shock to the county’s followers, although he always said he saw his role as having a limited period. As captain, his cricket was played in an era dominated by fast bowling and he lost no time in pursuing his dream of a Caribbean-style attack. It was a policy which touched the heights during an epic game against the Australians at the County Ground in 1989. But how did a cricketer who joined the county “as a young leg-spinner who could bat a bit” progress into a player who would be in anybody’s all-time Derbyshire side and has been such an influential figure in the club? Kim John Barnett was born at Stoke-on-Trent on 17 July 1960 and attended Leek High School. He excelled at youth level and made an impressive start for Derbyshire. Playing under Eddie Barlow with Boland in South Africa was a massive influence and, with the backing of Charlie Elliott, Guy Willatt and cricket-manager-in-all-but name Phil Russell, he adopted a dynamic and aggressive approach to his captaincy. Towards the end of the 1983 season he began to go in first, regularly in the Championship, rapidly becoming one of the most adventurous and entertaining opening batsmen on the circuit. With effortless and crisp timing and a glittering array of forceful and attacking strokes either side of the wicket, he could shred an attack. Perhaps a little impetuous outside the off-stump, where he played the percentages with hundreds of runs coming from square cuts or superb cover drives to compensate for the occasional edge, he was still capable of digging in when the occasion demanded. For example, at Folkestone in 1985, he occupied 50 overs in making 14 to defy Kent’s spin bowlers and help save the game. The West Indies had raised the art of using four genuinely fast bowlers as a unit to a new level. Barnett and Russell looked on enviously but it is one thing to employ such an attack over a five-match Tests series. It is quite another to attempt it on English pitches through the varied conditions of a Championship season. The answer was a rotation-policy which was ahead of its time. Barnett said: “With covering producing hard pitches bowlers were finding it more difficult to take wickets and unless you found a pitch which was seam-friendly you needed genuine pace to make a difference. Covering the ends made it tougher for the bowlers, who had to run in hard and were landing in their delivery stride on what must have felt like concrete. It all added to the stress and the risk of injury.” A policy evolved which was based on quality allied to numerical strength. In 1989, with Ian Bishop’s arrival to share the overseas place with Michael Holding, the permutations appeared endless. Nine bowlers – Ole Mortensen, Devon Malcolm, Allan Warner, Martin Jean-Jaques, Simon Base, Frankie Griffith, Paul Newman and either Bishop or Holding as the overseas choice launched fusillades of pace, either fast or fast-medium, at the County Ground. By now Barnett was attracting the attention of the Test selectors. In 1988 he made a dazzling 175 against Gloucestershire at Derby which included a century before lunch off an attack which included the Australian fast-medium bowler Terry Alderman, who had taken 42 wickets in the 1981 six-Test series. He followed this with an unbeaten 239 at Leicester and he was selected for the fifth Test against the West Indies at The Oval only for a hand injury to compel his withdrawal. His chance came in the Lord’s Test against Sri Lanka when he made 66 and 0 and he followed this with 84 in the Texaco Trophy limited-over game at The Oval. His selection for the subsequently cancelled tour of India (the Indian government would not grant visas to eight players, including Barnett, because of links with South Africa) followed as a matter of course. And then, in 1989, the Australians, led by Allan Border, arrived. England, with Ted Dexter as chairman of selectors, Micky Stewart as team manager and David Gower appointed captain, held the Ashes and were favourites to retain them. In their final match before the first Test at Headingley, the Australians met Derbyshire at the County Ground on Saturday, Sunday and Monday June 3, 4 and 5. Barnett recalls it as probably the best match in which he played: “Castlemaine, an Australian brewing company, had offered a share of £25,000 for victories in county matches and while the prize money was a factor we needed no financial incentives to turn out our best side against the Australians. They had lost by three wickets against Worcestershire on a well-grassed wicket
