It is 35 years since the unlikely, bespectacled duo of Asif Din and Neil Smith held off Middlesex in a thrilling finish to a low-scoring Lord’s final
Warwickshire’s Asif Din and Neil Smith celebrate after Smith’s six in the final over against Middlesex at Lord’s in 1989. ‘Part of the day is to embrace it,’ Smith says. ‘If you let the pressure dominate you, that’s when you don’t perform.’Warwickshire’s Asif Din and Neil Smith celebrate after Smith’s six in the final over against Middlesex at Lord’s in 1989. ‘Part of the day is to embrace it,’ Smith says. ‘If you let the pressure dominate you, that’s when you don’t perform.’need 10 to win.
“Footwork not out of the coaching book,” Jack Bannister remarks in the commentary box. “The ball nearly out of the ground.” Six, in an era when a maximum was truly meaningful.Desmond Haynes of Middlesex flicks the ball off his pads on his way to 50 at Lord’s, with Warwickshire’s Dermot Reeve fielding at short leg.The next ball is a dot fired into Smith’s pads. Hughes sprays the fourth ball down leg. The umpire, Dickie Bird, thinks for a while before signalling wide. Two needed off three.
Mike Gatting, the Middlesex captain, declared later he would have put his benefit money on Warwickshire not getting the runs. “Gatting wasn’t the only one who backed me to defend 10,” says Hughes. “Desmond Haynes had it on cast-iron guarantee because he’d already spent his win bonus. He bought some accessories for his car back in Barbados, a spoiler and some alloy wheels. When I see him now he says: ‘Yozzer, you owe me five grand.
“We’d been at Headingley in the days before, a dead Championship fixture,” Smith says. “I went in as nightwatchman on Thursday and got 160 on Friday. I hadn’t even got a first-class 50 before that.”As supporters invade the hallowed Lord’s turf, Asif Din runs towards the pavilion with three souvenir stumps after Warwickshire’s final-over victory against Middlesex.Haynes top-scored, grinding out a half-century before being bowled by Smith.
Collectively, too, victory set a platform for an era of unparalleled Warwickshire success. “The progression of the positive cricket we played through the 90s started after that,” Smith says. “It was small margins. How did we win? How do we improve? “No. God, no,” he says. “My whole career is identified with that one ball. You can’t change it. I’d prefer if my career was remembered for something good, but at least it’s remembered for something.
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