Lara Helped Steer The Greatest Team In County History

The kind of success Warwickshire enjoyed in 1994 has never been achieved before or since, and once the new domestic structure/ blueprint for change/vision for sustainable progress/dog’s dinner (apply to taste) is in place from next season, it will certainly never happen again.

Thank goodness then for The Greatest Season, written by veteran journalist and BBC broadcaster Pat Murphy to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the summer when, led by coach Bob Woolmer and captain Dermot Reeve and powered by the galactic brilliance of Brian Lara, they won their fourth County Championship, their second Sunday League (remember them?), their first Benson and Hedges Cup (see above) and were only denied a clean sweep of four domestic titles by Worcestershire in the NatWest Trophy final.

For Murphy has pulled the strands and stories together in an absorbing read and a poignant reminder of how much county cricket meant to those other than the diehards in the days when 20/20 meant perfect eyesight and a hundred was just a hundred and special enough for that.

And of all of them, the most intriguing concerned the part played in their season for the ages by luck, pure and simple, from even before it began.

Murphy recalls how Lara would not have arrived at Edgbaston in the first place, had it not intervened to redirect the course of cricket history, when, in early April, Keith Cook of the club’s marketing department, collected their original choice of overseas player from Heathrow Airport, the Indian Test allrounder Manoj Prabhakar.

“The conversation on the way up the motorway was amiable enough,” writes Murphy, “but then Cook noticed something disturbing.

“‘He was wearing those high-zipped Chelsea boots that were fashionable’ said Cook. ‘He undid the zip, rolled up his trouser leg and asked me what he thought of a scar’.”