OLD HANDS – NEW RECORDS
Debutants of 2000
Twenty-five years ago, Nottinghamshire took the field for the opening game of the summer with two seasoned players added to their eleven.
Team manager Clive Rice, brought back to Trent Bridge to revive an under-achieving squad, had overseen something of a ‘clear out’ at the end of 1999 and used his considerable experience and reputation to recruit two former England internationals in ex-Surrey batter Darren Bicknell and middle order maestro John Morris from Durham (via Derbyshire).
Indeed, when Morris was asked what brought him back to the East Midlands at a stage of his career when a gentler run down might be expected, he answered with one word – “Rice”.
The two might have made their Notts debut together against Cambridge University but April rain meant that the game was abandoned without a ball being bowled.
So, their joint debut was made on 26 April 2000 against Northamptonshire at Trent Bridge – but that match didn’t fare much better, there being no play on days one and two. The inevitable draw followed with neither Bicknell nor Morris able to show the faithful why Rice had opted for their experience and abilities.
That became apparent in Bicknell’s fifth game for Notts when he and Guy Welton made a record unbroken stand of 406 against Warwickshire – a record that remains not just the highest opening stand in Nottinghamshire’s history but the highest for any wicket!
Bicknell made 180no, to be his highest innings for Notts, and Welton exactly 200, his only double century. In fact, he made only one other century in more than 70 First-Class games.
John Morris was to feature in his own record stand in 2001 when he and Kevin Pietersen, another Clive Rice recruit, put on 372 in an unbroken sixth wicket stand against Morris’s first county, Derbyshire. Morris made 136 and Pietersen 218 but the truly remarkable thing about the ex-Derby man’s achievement was that in the first innings he had made even more runs – 170 – in a stand of 316 with Usman Afzaal (138).
As might be imagined, with scores on that scale, it wasn’t a thrilling match; at 1,655 runs it stands as the highest aggregate of any Notts match but in truth, as the Notts Cricket Annual honestly commented, ‘this game was a complete farce’.
But that shouldn’t detract from Morris’s personal achievements. To be in two three-hundred-run stands in a career would be extraordinary – to do it twice in one game must, surely, be unique.
John Morris came tantalisingly close to another record in that mammoth first innings knock. “I was in with a shout of getting a double hundred for three different counties”, he recalled, “when I managed to get run out”!
Darren Bicknell played for Notts from 2000 to 2006 and made 6,721 First-Class at 36.78 with fourteen centuries; John Morris, who retired at the end of the 2001 season, scored 1,241 runs at a very similar average of 36.50, with three hundreds.
They were needed at Nottinghamshire because nine players had left at the end of the previous season.
Graeme Archer, Richard Bates, Mat Dowman (who went to Derbyshire) and Noel Gie were not retained by the Club; Alex Wharf, later to be an international umpire, left to join Glamorgan; skipper and opening bat Tim Robinson retired; Vasbert Drakes did not return to Trent Bridge; and Jamie Hart and Andy Oram retired due to injury.
It says something about the size of the squad that Rice inherited on his return to Trent Bridge that in 2000 there were just five county debuts, rather than nine vacancies being filled. In addition to Morris and Bicknell, debuts were given to AJ Harris – another of Clive Rice’s recruits – Chris Hewison (who played just one First-Class game), and Australian international Paul Reiffel.
Reiffel was a late signing for that one season when Nottinghamshire’s original choice of overseas bowler, Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar, was injured and unable to fulfil his contract.
The two record-breakers gave a much needed boost and solidity to the Notts batting and each enjoyed a late career flourish.
Stats and scorecards for 2000 can be seen here
Profiles on all the players involved in those record stands are in the History and Library section of the Trent Bridge website: here
April 2025