Following the passing of John Hampshire last week, Derek Pringle remembers a man who was highly respected as a player and an umpire
John Hampshire was a team player from the old school. Weaned by the Yorkshire dressing-room of the 1960s, if such a caring term can be used, he became a fine middle-order batsman who brooked no nonsense, no easy thing in a team full of itself after winning the County Championship six times in eight years.
Hampshire put his acceptance in to Yorkshire’s bear pit down to two things – Brian Close’s shrewd captaincy and man-management skills, and Hampshire’s second job as Fred Trueman’s chauffeur. There have been no greater alpha males in Yorkshire cricket than Trueman and his protection allowed the young Hampshire to thrive through one of the most chastening rites of passage in cricket.
Widely known as ‘Jack’ or ‘Jacky’, a common transmutation of John in the north, he later admitted he hated the name even though it stuck fast to him throughout his life.
His England debut, against the West Indies in 1969, saw him make a hundred, an innings he self-deprecatingly described as “all nicks and edges”. It was, though, the first time an England player had scored a Test hundred on debut at Lord’s, a feat that has been managed just twice since, by Andrew Strauss and Matt Prior.
By his own admission, Hampshire never enjoyed Test cricket, suffering the self-doubt that many have who fear they are not good enough. His remaining seven Tests, spread over the next six years, yielded just 291 runs at an average of 22.38, though two of them did come in the famous 1970/71 Ashes series win in Australia under Ray Illingworth. He also played in the first three one-day internationals in history, the first of them on that tour.
A batsman who favoured the front foot, Hampshire could hit the ball hard wherever it was bowled. One match for Yorkshire, against Derbyshire, saw him take on Alan Ward after the fast bowler had taken three quick wickets. Hampshire belted him everywhere to the extent that when Brian Bolus, Derbyshire’s captain, asked Ward to try the other end after lunch, the bowler refused.
When asked why, Ward replied: “I just can’t bowl at him.” At which point Bolus said: “Well, you are no use to me if you won’t bowl, so you’d better leave the field,” and promptly sent Ward off.
Although Yorkshire to the marrow, Hampshire left the county in 1981 for Derbyshire. A long-running feud with Geoff Boycott came to a head when a go-slow by Hampshire against Northamptonshire (in protest against a six-hour hundred from Boycott) caused Boycott to be ousted as captain. Hampshire then took over the reins though supporters of the jettisoned captain never allowed him to settle into the role.
His three seasons with Derbyshire, while decent enough, were brought to a head one day at Chesterfield when the team sat down to lunch and, for the first time, there was no beer laid out on the table. Hampshire summoned the club secretary to demand an explanation and was told that Derbyshire were taking a more professional approach, which included removing beer from the lunch table.
“If there’s no beer for lunch then I shall be retiring at the end of the season,” said Hampshire. And so he did.
His playing career was only half the story as Hampshire spent the next 30 years as an umpire, an umpire’s mentor and coach of Zimbabwe. A man with a bone dry sense of humour tucked behind a poker face, Hampshire was nevertheless full of sage advice. In 1989, Essex were docked 25 points for a sub-standard pitch at Southend, a penalty that cost them that year’s County Championship. Earlier that season, Essex had beaten Warwickshire at Ilford on a pitch that went through the top far more than the surface at Southend had. Hampshire was one of the umpires and as acting captain (Gooch was away playing for England) I was nervous that he might report it.
“Don’t worry, Kiddo,” he said.
“Don’t believe all those old ’uns who tell you that pitches were better in their day. I’ve played on far worse than this I can tell thee.”
He was also umpiring when his colleague Merv Kitchen gave me out caught off the shoulder following a bouncer from Jeff Thomson during Essex’s match against Australia at Chelmsford in 1984. I left the field rubbing my shoulder, as you do, an act that saw me summoned to the umpire’s room after play.
After a full and frank discussion with Kitchen, Hampshire, who’d seen the ball cannon off my shoulder from square leg, said his piece. “Whenever an umpire gave me out and it were a s**t decision, I used to say to him afterwards – ‘that were a s**t decision ump, now what are you having to drink?’”
It was good advice, but with passions still running high, on my part at least, it was advice I did not take.
Hampshire was umpiring when the ball was changed during a one-day international between England and Pakistan in 1992, an event which, while thought to be about ball-tampering, is still shrouded in mystery especially the authority’s decision to put him quietly out to pasture afterwards.
Three years earlier, he, along with John Holder, had become the first of the neutral umpires to officiate in a Test series after Imran Khan had asked them to stand in the 1989/90 series between Pakistan and India. It ended a 0-0 draw but Hampshire, who recognised it as a pioneering act, reckoned it the best moment of his umpiring life.
A stint as Zimbabwe’s coach followed during the country’s foray into Test cricket but whether doing that, umpiring or playing, almost everyone who knew John Hampshire will be united in their appraisal of him as a man of integrity and humour – a combination for which any of us would be proud.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, March 3 2017
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