Cricket: Speight displays sleight of hand

By David Llewellyn

at Portsmouth

Durham 203 & 332-9 Hampshire 396 Match drawn

SO THE stigma stays with Hampshire. They remain the only first-class side never to have beaten Durham in the County Championship, and must remain so for another year. The weather set in early yesterday and although there was a window of brighter stuff the view through it was not exactly heartening for Hampshire fans. All they could see was Durham's last-wicket pair of Martin Speight and Steven Lugsden carrying the game further from Hampshire's grasp.

No one should be surprised at the way the game ended. In five of the six previous meetings between these two sides the weather has robbed them of large chunks of play. In a way the rain brought a mercifully premature end to proceedings. Hampshire did not look remotely like getting out either man.

They had begun the day three hours late at 2pm, needing to take one wicket. Durham had a precarious 95-run advantage, which should have presented no problem for the Hampshire batsmen to knock off, rain or no rain.

Lugsden, the tail-ender, was playing his first match since May 1997 and the feeling from the sidelines was that a straight ball of fuller length would be enough to end his resistance. Instead he was peppered with short deliveries, most notably by Nixon McLean, Hampshire's West Indies Test fast bowler, and, for a short while, Alex Morris. Even Peter Hartley was unable to get Lugsden to play at some deliveries. For much of the time Speight was given plenty of room and opportunity to farm the bowling out, almost at will. And should that be doubted, the scorers' book later revealed that Speight stole a single off the fourth ball of 14 of the 21 overs bowled in that spell of clearer weather.

Speight batted perfectly. He deserved to reach a hundred, and must have been quietly desperate to do so, because his previous century was scored in August 1996 when he was still at Sussex. Although he had opportunities to go for runs during the 78 minutes the pair were digging in, he selflessly put the team before himself and was eventually left stranded by the rain a tantalising three runs short of his hundred.

It was still his highest score for Durham, whom he joined in 1997, his previous best being the 73 not out he made in June last year against Kent. This innings, given the pressure that Speight was under, will have gone a long way to restoring him to something like the form he was in before he was struck down by a viral complaint while still with Sussex.

He has made a habit of hitting big scores against Hampshire. He had twice before made hundreds against them, one at Portsmouth and the other at Hove.

Yesterday's effort was heroic. He had spent almost three hours at the crease, hitting two sixes (on Saturday) and a total of 10 fours in the 140 balls he faced.