National Counties Championship Final Coaches' Reaction

Berkshire coach Tom Lambert admitted that the target is again on his side’s back after they became the most successful side in National Counties/Minor Counties history.

Berkshire won the National Counties Championship by virtue of their first innings lead over Lincolnshire in a rain-ravaged final at West Bromwich Dartmouth which was their tenth trophy in a remarkable six season period.

It was also the 16th title – nine Championships, six 50-overs Trophy competitions plus one T20 crown – in Berkshire’s history which took them ahead of Staffordshire’s collection of 15 pieces of silverware – 13 Championships plus two Trophy titles.

Having surrendered both their Western Division and national Championship titles to Oxfordshire last year, Berkshire are now back in possession which Lambert knows will again make them the side to beat next season.

“It was anti-climactic in the sense that there was ball being hit for four or the off stump cartwheeling out of the ground to win the game,” Lambert said.

“But winning a trophy is never anti-climactic. We never, ever take it for granted. We love winning stuff and this means just as much as all the other ones.

“We need to do it again next year. We need to push on with this side. Other teams need to catch us and they will have to work harder to catch us.

“But we also had to work harder this year to catch Oxfordshire. We knew we had to do certain things, replace certain people and find a new way of doing things.

“That way has won us two trophies and we have got to go again because the target is back on our back which it probably wasn’t this year. Maybe it was more on Oxfordshire’s and certain other teams’ backs.”

In a dry summer it was disappointing that the showpiece final was decimated by rain – only a third of the scheduled overs were bowled over the four days – and that a gloomy weather forecast proved accurate.

It soon became clear that the match was likely to be drawn so the title would be decided by first innings lead with the decisive passage of play coming late on the third evening when Euan Woods and Dan O’Driscoll took Berkshire past Lincolnshire’s first innings 176.

“We were talking at the end of day two, we needed 35 and they needed four wickets. I said to the boys: put your hands up would you rather be the batting team or the bowling team and it was half-and-half,” Lambert said.

“It was in the balance and, in itself, the game came down to the session that started at five o’clock on the third evening.

“We knew that we would win or lose the championship in the next ten overs. So, we went to the nets and hit balls for two hours to make sure we were ready if we did get on. We did get on and thankfully we saw it through.

“It’s a weird way to win it – we haven’t won this game, we have only drawn it – but we have won the Championship. All things considered, there were still problems to solve and we did a good job in doing that.

“We use problem solving quite a lot. You face different things in games, you have to play in different ways in the different competitions and it was a challenge to work out what we needed to do here.

“The toss was massive. We mulled over that all morning - the final 11 we were going to pick and what we were going to do if we won the toss.

“We just felt that it was going to be a shortened game and our best way of getting into it would be by giving the new ball to Tom Nugent and Andy Rishton and hope that we could get them to a total that would be non-pressure deliverable to make sure that we would win on first innings predicting that we wouldn’t get four innings in because of the weather forecast.

“I thought we managed that really well. They had to deliver by bowling well to get us there and we had to be smart throughout which we did really well.”

For Lincolnshire’s head of performance Eddie Burke there was a mixture of frustration and pride after his side finished as runners-up to Berkshire for the fourth time in six seasons.

“It was very frustrating with the weather and the way the run of play went against us,” he said

“But the boys have had a really good season, we have won the Eastern Division, they have played some fantastic, exciting cricket all year and their commitment and effort has been absolutely brilliant.

“I am really looking forward to taking things forward over this winter. We have a lot of talent in and around the county.

“We’re looking forward to working with this squad. There will be a couple changes due to the nature of people’s work and we also have some exciting talent coming through our pathway.

“We have a really good team culture and we’re looking to grow on that in the future.”