Casting His Mind Back

The latters' last wicket pair somehow managed to survive the last 28 deliveries.

That day was almost 21 years ago and the match in question went a long way to explaining why Sussex failed to win the county championship for the first time in their history.

Unsurprisingly, that match figures prominently in John Barclay's book "The Appeal of the Championship" which tells the story of how, in the author's first season as captain, Sussex finished as runners-up two points behind the champions Nottinghamshire.

Barclay, now the director of Arundel Castle's Cricket Foundation, was persuaded to put pen to paper at the beginning of last year by his former Sussex colleague Paul Parker.

"Paul felt I should do something different and encouraged me to write. He introduced me to a Times journalist, Keith Blackmore, and we discussed my writing some articles on the 1981 season.

"The idea was to link these articles with Botham's Ashes series and the fact that 20 years later the Australians were back again," Barclay explained.

Having kept no diaries for that season Barclay had to rely on his elephant-like memory and newspaper cuttings for the 20 articles each about 1,000 words long which were published.

"The question I was always asked afterwards was when was I going to make the articles in to a book?

"My initial feeling was that the subject was rather narrow but the publisher Stephen Chalke read the manuscript, liked it and said 'let's do it,'" Barclay commented.

The early seeds for Barclay's book which takes in his elaborate pre-season plans in Sydney and a bonding session at the Avisford Park Hotel to the excitement of the final matches were sown in Barclay's formative years.

Born in Bonn through his father's Foreign Office duties, Barclay soon found himself living in Horsham. At the tender age of three or four he watched a club match there and has been hooked ever since.

Barclay's next home was Henfield where, with his brother and friends, he started to play cricket. From there he caught the bus to Brighton every day to attend school.

"I was very lucky as it was a small school and one of the masters whom I knew only as 'Sir' was very keen on cricket and had us playing at Patcham Place.

"Besides the Easter holiday coaching sessions at the County Ground I was also coached by Les Lenham in the indoor nets during the winter. But at the time playing for Sussex was no more than a dream.

"Ted Dexter was very much my ultimate hero but I was also very starry-eyed about all the players," Barclay admits.

Progress for Barclay was swift. A year after captaining Sussex Young Cricketers for the first of three tours to the Midlands, Barclay played in two Sussex second X1 matches aged 15 and made his championship debut against Glamorgan at Swansea the following year.

He joined the Sussex staff as an 18-year old and six years later assumed the captaincy.

With his characteristic modesty Barclay points out how lucky he was to inherit a squad which included Imran Khan, Garth le Roux, Geoff Arnold, Ian Greig, Gehan Mendis, Ian Gould and Parker.

Barclay salutes all his players and gives a vivid insight as to why Sussex were such a positive team under his leadership.

A draw at Trent Bridge may have been where the championship was finally decided but, as Barclay points out, two of Sussex's matches were washed out by rain compared with Nottinghamshire's one. There was also the match at Leicester where Sussex fell three runs short of victory in attempting a fourth innings run chase.

THE APPEAL OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP by John Barclay (Foreword by Rt Rev Lord Sheppard of Liverpool) published by Fairfield Books costs 14.00.