The Times writer and former Glamorgan batsman Steve James chats to Northeast, who roared past the 309 benchmark he set in 2000.
What do you say to a man who has just nicked something that you have cherished for 22 years? Well, in this instance, you send your heartiest congratulations and then end up marvelling at your record not just being taken but being taken so far that no other Glamorgan batsman will surely ever reach it. Sam Northeast climbed to the highest mountains where roam some of the batting gods – the likes of Brian Lara and Sir Donald Bradman.
My WhatsApp message was duly sent on Saturday morning to Northeast once he went past my score of 309 not out, made against Sussex in 2000, little knowing that there was much, much more to come than the mere passing of a record held by some long-forgotten blocker.
Northeast finished with an astonishing 410 not out against Leicestershire at Grace Road – the third-highest score in the history of the County Championship, behind only Lara’s 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994 and Archie MacLaren’s 424 for Lancashire against Somerset in 1895.
There have been only 11 scores of 400 or more in first-class cricket across the globe, made by nine batsmen (Lara and Bill Ponsford each made two of those scores). Northeast now takes his place in that very exclusive club.
It is a quite remarkable achievement by a batsman with a previous highest score of 191 and one whose future looked distinctly uncertain last year when leaving his second county, Hampshire – he is a man of Kent – and going out on loan at Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.
But Northeast, 32, has always been a player of high quality (he averages 40 in first-class cricket, a reliable barometer of class) and is probably unfortunate never to have received an England cap; this was a performance to prove as much, etching a considerable mark in cricket’s annals.
Glamorgan did not have a match this week and it has allowed Northeast a precious opportunity to reflect. “It has sunk in now,” he says, when we speak on Wednesday. “It’s been quite nice to have this week to let it all settle in and look back at it with fond memories rather going straight back out to bat.”
As you would expect, the wellwishers have been plentiful. “There have been a lot of people who have got in touch, people I have played with in this country, in Australia and in South Africa,” he says. “It’s amazing how the cricket family get in touch when something like this happens. I was sort of hoping for a message off like Brian Lara or something, saying ‘Welcome to the club,’ but that hasn’t happened. Maybe my expectation is quite high.”
His tongue is firmly in cheek, but his innings has not gone unnoticed in high places. His former Kent colleague Rob Key, now the managing director of England men’s cricket, unsurprisingly got in touch, but he also forwarded something interesting.
“Keysy basically sent a message that [Brendon] McCullum had sent him,” Northeast says. ” ‘Awesome to see Northeast going to 400 with a homer,’ it said. I guess that is his way of saying six.”
Passing 400 with a six over long-on was indeed a particularly bold move, but very much in the manner McCullum so likes and now espouses as head coach of the Test side.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Northeast says. “I look back on it now and think, if I’d got out on 390-odd, how disappointed I would have been.”
Fielders were back on the boundary at long-off and long-on, evidence of a very different era from that when the previous record had been set (and Northeast is not considered extravagant in his shot range either). My 309 occupied more balls (491) than Northeast’s 410 (450 balls). Indeed, in 1999 I had faced 546 balls in making 259 not out. Boring, boring.
“Bazball [a term used to describe England’s attacking style] has given people a more positive mindset, not being afraid of situations and scenarios,” Northeast says. “I’m not sure everyone is going to go out and start absolutely teeing off now, but for me it was more from the recent T20s – I had found a bit of form in that – and I just took that tempo and rhythm into the four-day stuff, rather than trying to go back and be tight. I just let it go. That is a little bit like Bazball, I guess.”
Northeast was unaware of my record until he ended day three of the match at Grace Road on 308, one run short. “Everyone was telling me about it then,” he says. “I don’t want to upset you, but I was desperate to beat your record. Just to get level with it, I thought, ‘If I can just cement myself in Glamorgan history then that would be a really proud moment for me.’ I was actually very nervous that day.”
It was only late on Friday afternoon that I had been alerted (by my former opening partner Hugh Morris) to the potential danger to my record. I had been there before in 2006, when my good friend Mike Powell was racing along against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham. Sitting in the Old Trafford press box, covering an England-Pakistan Test, I had resigned myself to the inevitable – then the message arrived that Powell had been dismissed for 299.
Often loath to admit as much, sportspeople generally love holding records and they are sad to see them broken. But of course, in cricket, even though individual statistics still mean so much, there is always that balance between the aspirations of the individual and the needs of the team.
And that came into sharp focus when Northeast and Chris Cooke (191 not out) went into lunch on the fourth day at Leicester. Their mammoth unbeaten partnership of 461 was only 26 runs shy of the highest sixth-wicket total in history, while Northeast could have had a shot at Lara’s 501 and Cooke at a double century. Should they carry on?
That was the big question.
Social media was awash with criticism when Glamorgan took the decision to declare at the interval, but the head coach, Matthew Maynard, and the captain, David Lloyd, had the last laugh when Glamorgan won by an innings and 28 runs.
“We had a discussion when we came back in, which was, ‘Have we got enough runs to make sure they don’t go past us? Have we got enough time to bowl them out?’ ” Northeast recalls. “Matt was also conscious that Cookey was on 191 and we were so close to the partnership record and that obviously I could have gone up a few levels in that list. He was just gauging it, asking, ‘How important is all this to us?’ It was a discussion for about ten minutes. We all came down to, ‘Let’s get out and bowl.’ It was the perfect declaration.
“Lara’s record was never in my mind, to be honest. Getting 410 was above my wildest dreams. But you always want more as a batter, you still want to keep going. Maybe if I was anywhere near, if I was on something ridiculous like 470 then you might just say, ‘Give it three overs,’ or something. It was the right decision and everyone agreed on it. When we went out and won it, it was the perfect cherry on the cake.”
I wondered how Northeast had slept while on 308, for it is a myth that batters sleep soundly after a long innings – the mind is restless and the replays endless.
“My mind was racing, the adrenaline was still going, and my body was quite sore,” he says. “It wasn’t a great night. I remember going to the nets that morning and not feeling great. It was second ball and Dessie [the assistant coach, David Harrison] slung one that nipped back and completely castled me. I just thought, ‘I am going to have wake myself up here and sort myself out.’ ”
He did that all right. Yes, the pitch was a belter, and the outfield lightning fast, but batting records are not set on green tops (although my 309 was scored on that most treacherous of pitches at Colwyn Bay, with enormous boundaries, or maybe I have recalled that incorrectly). Northeast’s father watched every ball on the live stream and declared it the best he had seen his son play.
“He said he felt calm; he said he had never watched me and felt calm,” Northeast says. “I said, ‘What? The other times you think I am going to get out every ball?’ He said he was never in doubt that I was going to go on and get a score.”
And some score it was.
-The Times
Originally published as ‘I was desperate to beat your record’ – Sam Northeast recounts his 410 to the man he surpassed
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