The day steady Eddie Hemmings tied Essex up in Notts

by David Reavill l Sportingo.com l Write for Notts CCC l 

Ah, they don't make 'em like that any more. It's 1989, a full-house at Lord's, and a boundary needed off the final ball to win the Benson and Hedges Cup. Enter the fat man to sing. The year 1989 seems a lifetime ago to me. I mean, it just sounds so long ago.  I was a confused teenager studying for my A-levels, Maggie Thatcher was in power, people were dancing to the sounds of Jive Bunny and Kylie and Jason, and fat people could still become international sportsman.

In particular I am thinking of the hero of my tale, one Edward Ernest Hemmings. Eddie was a source of inspiration to a 17-year-old with puppy fat that went to the 1989 Benson and Hedges final with his mum.

I had grown to love the game of cricket, though as a Notts fan I was left embittered and angry by a last-ball defeat to Essex in the Nat West final of 1985. I had since gone back to Lord’s to see them triumph over Northants a couple of years later, but it was those cocky upstarts from the home counties that I was desperate to see beaten on a sunny day in north London in July. 'Revenge is a dish best served cold' was a phrase that sprang to mind as I made way to my seat in the old and breezy Warner stand, surrounded by a group of loud, boozy Essex fans.

A repeat of the Graham Gooch/ Brian Hardie opening partnership from the 1985 final would have been enough to send any Notts fan into a cold sweat. So there was a sense of great relief, as well as a good deal of amusement, when Hardie fell to Franklyn Stephenson’s sucker punch, the slowest of slow deliveries. Franklyn was the acknowledged king of the slow ball and it was impossible to get bored of seeing him beaming with delight after trapping yet another batsman in his headlights. Having said all that, it was to be his only contribution of the day as he got spanked round Lord’s and fell to a miserable first-baller when the pressure was on at the end.

Still, I digress. The Essex innings was a typical pre-Jayasuriya plod through 55 overs. The only opportunities for me to cheer (quietly, remember I was sitting amongst the enemy, as well as being with my mum) being when danger man Graham Gooch was bowled by the wily left-arm spin of Andy Afford and the rather comical run out of cricket’s 80s fall guy, Derek Pringle - which involved a yes-no interchange as well as a falling over.

The Notts reply started badly with the loss of two cheap wickets. But Tim Robinson and Paul Johnson rallied, and Derek Randall evoked memories of that 1985 final with another heart-pounding innings. Rags played like a man possessed; he had obviously had similar nightmares to me over the past four years (if only he hadn’t lobbed that catch to Paul Pritchard!)

Randall did not get the opportunity to be there at the end, out one short of his half-century; however, cometh the hour, cometh the man in the unlikely form of our hero Hemmings. No one in the full-capacity crowd they used to have for those domestic finals back in the 80s could quite believe that we had on our hands yet another last-ball thriller. A boundary needed, John Lever bowling and our man Eddie facing.

It took an age to bowl that last ball. Goodness only knows what Eddie had planned. Whatever it was, it worked as he glided/stroked/thrashed/edged the ball to the point boundary. Wonderful!