ScorecardMoeen Ali joined forces with Jack Shantry to be become the match-winning bowling combination•Getty Images
They wept.Whether from tension, disbelief or joy, some Worcestershire members gathered under the Graeme Hick pavilion on Friday afternoon had tears on their cheeks as they watched their heroes drench each other with champagne after they had defeated Surrey by 27 runs.They cheered.The victory ensures that Daryl Mitchell’s side will be promoted after two seasons in Division Two. That in itself was sufficient to prompt hurrahs from the few hundred loyalists on the outfield.They applauded.Maybe some of the loudest clapping honoured Jack Shantry, who had just added match-figures of 10 for 131 to his second-innings century. But, of course, the whole squad was being saluted after a season in which they had won eight of their 15 matches, the last of these victories being one of the most dramatic and wonderful in the county’s history.So they wept, cheered and applauded. And I swear that if the Ladies Pavilion had been open, someone would have rattled the cake-stands.On occasions cricket takes the inevitable, the probable and even the merely quite likely and stuffs them with little ceremony in sport’s deepest dustbin. This was such a match and its last day was no less extraordinary than the three preceding.When play began Surrey were 30 for 1, needing another 187 to win the game and keep their own hopes of promotion alive. Already it seemed that the chance wicketkeeper Ben Cox had dropped off Vikram Solanki the previous evening would be crucial. The former Worcestershire captain was 21 not out overnight and batting ominously well.The New Road pitch was still pretty flat, although it had offered help for swing bowlers, particularly in the first hour of each day’s play. So it was seen as a blow to the home side’s hopes when Solanki and his partner Zafar Ansari negotiated the first ninety minutes of the session with skill and aplomb.By midday the mood inside the ground was quiet, resigned, almost peaceful. The crowd was smaller than that which had cheered Shantry’s hundred to the echo and it seemed to accept what they thought inevitable. After every party comes a reckoning.Even the dismissal of Solanki, bowled when he inside-edged Charlie Morris onto his stumps did not change matters much. Surrey lunched on 122 for 2 and a few people bade farewell to friends they would not see for six months or so. Ansari was batting beautifully and playing an admirable opener’s innings. The win had always been a long shot, after all.Worcestershire skipper Mitchell was among those who thought matters were settled. “I think the lads kept believing but deep down I thought that we were dead and buried,” he said later.So it is safe to say, then, that what followed in the next two hours came as something of a shock to the affable Worcestershire captain. For yet again the second part of a day’s play in this match bore little relation to what had taken place in the first.In truth, though, we should have expected something to occur when Shantry was given the ball and asked to bowl from the Diglis End. He struck in the third over after the resumption when Steven Davies pushed forward and edged a catch to Mitchell at slip. Already those behind the arm could see that the ball was now swinging; they dared to hope.
It’s like Botham’s Ashes – Rhodes
After Worcestershire’s extraordinary win, their director of cricket tried to put it into words
“I’ve gone through so many emotions over these few days really. Today I’ve never been as nervous in all my life, all cricket, anytime. These boys have worked their nuts off all season and there have been some special performances from all of them at times.
“When we lost Alan Richardson in the winter, everyone said ‘you are not going to do anything, you’ve lost your best bowler’ and Moeen has not been here for a lot of year. For the lads to pull this off has been a special performance all-round. There is one bloke to whom we should really pay tribute for this promotion and that’s Damian D’Oliveira.
“It was very sad in the middle of the season, the boys took his death quite badly, so we are dedicating this promotion to Damian.
“Jack Shantry turned the game – I am very frustrated with the top order in these last three or four matches and they know that, but how Jack has turned the game around is quite incredible. It’s like Botham’s Ashes at Headingley. He doesn’t give up, Jack is a very determined character but also in the defeats recently there have been some good fightbacks.
“We have shown a lot more fight than we would have done in the past. To go and play in Division One is going to be a really tough task for us but I’m hoping we show a little bit more steel than previously because the guys have worked particularly hard. It won’t be easy next year but we’ll hopefully put on a better showing.
“The one thing about this dressing room is that it is very together. The guys get on ever so well and that is your 12th man. It is a big help when you play against sides who possibly haven’t got that.
“It is a team game and we have shown a real team spirit and togetherness which has helped us.
Two overs later, Gary Wilson lost his off stump when he played inside a delivery from Shantry that had curved in to him: 131 for 4. “Can it still be done?” asked some. “No, but at least we’ve made it respectable,” came the rejoinder from their hard-headed neighbours. This, though, was no occasion for hard heads or good sense.From the New Road End England’s Moeen Ali had also taken up the attack. Indeed, he and Shantry were to operate unchanged for the rest of the game. The over after Wilson had departed, Jason Roy, as though overawed by the situation, drove at Moeen and gave a return catch. Barely ten minutes later, Aneesh Kapil had no price at all when he played back to a ball which both turned and kept low. 144 for 6.Now the game was in the hazard. Perhaps for the first time on Friday, home supporters began to believe that they would not have to go to Chelmsford needing a draw to guarantee promotion. More significantly the psychological balance of the match had changed, too. Suddenly Surrey’s players could see victory becoming less likely and their season effectively ending at New Road.Gareth Batty, though, began coolly, taking advantage of two loose balls from Moeen and then congratulating Ansari when he reached his fifty off 171 balls. The Surrey opener, it should be noted, batted with perfect poise for almost his entire innings. If only others had done the same.Having hit four boundaries, Batty was drawn forward by Moeen and bowled for 17. Thirteen runs were added in the next half hour but by now it was difficult to see where Surrey’s win was going to come from. The innings was almost becalmed as neither Ansari nor Stuart Meaker could get the bowlers away.Then, after facing 31 balls, Meaker played back to Shantry when he should have gone forward. His off stump slumped back. Two overs later Matt Dunn was pinned by the same bowler whose awkward round-the-wicket attack has posed problems for batsmen all season. 179 for 9. Nearly there, now.Joined by last man Jade Dernbach, Ansari changed his approach and the last pair added ten runs with a boundary and some scurried singles. The cricket became panicky, frenetic. Ansari drove a return catch back to Moeen, who dropped the thing. Was that the key moment?It was not. At three o’clock Ansari drove Moeen to Alex Kervezee at mid-off and called Dernbach for a run. The fielder’s throw hit the stumps. Umpire Nigel Cowley merely nodded and with one nod of an umpire’s head something like a year’s work bore the sweetest fruit.And yes, it will, indeed, be called “Shantry’s Match”. Already his Worcestershire’s team-mates have dubbed him “Beefy”, for he has become the first player in cricket’s history to score a century at No. 9 or lower and take ten wickets in the same match. They have folk festivals in these parts, and in Pershore or Bewdley, they may already be writing songs in Shantry’s honour.For the moment, though, the disarmingly pleasant architect of one if his county’s most famous victories will be content to celebrate long and hard with his team-mates. In that pursuit he will be joined by many others across this county over the coming weekend.And when the jubilation abates players and supporters alike may reflect on these four days under a September sun and consider whether they have ever seen a game quite like it. One suspects they have not.
