Henderson: how I won the T20 Cup for Middlesex

Tyron Henderson had already had a good Twenty20 Cup finals day for Middlesex: in the semi-final, he had blasted 59 off 21 balls to make short work of Steve Harmison and Durham. In the final, a comparatively sedate 43 off 33 had provided good support for Owais Shah’s masterful 75. Then, deep into the day’s 12th hour of cricket, the finale: with Henderson [pictured, top left, above] called on to bowl the final over of the tournament, Kent needed just 12 to win. Lucrative places at the Stanford Super Series and the Champions League were at stake.

When Dawid Malan managed to (over)throw from one boundary to the other off the fourth ball, Middlesex looked out of it. But the 34-year-old Henderson, the most successful player in Twenty20 history, managed to keep his cool…

It was arguably the biggest over in county cricket history. What was going through your mind at the start?

That’s what you practice for. You train for those situations and that’s my role in the side: I know that myself and Tim Murtagh will be bowling at the end. That’s my job. I always think that if a side needs 12 off the last over and I’m bowling then I back myself. I back myself not to go for two runs off every ball.
Justin Kemp skinned the first one back past me for four. It happens. He can be a very dangerous man at the end of a game. Then there was the little overthrow on the fourth ball which didn’t help [laughs]. It was messy for a ball or two. Then it all boiled down to the last two balls of the innings. They needed four off two and I managed to pull it off without them getting any runs.

The fifth ball was a slower ball…
[laughs] Yes. That was a bit gutsy. Very gutsy. Very brave. But Kempy wasn’t really expecting me to bowl a slower ball at that stage. I don’t think anyone was! It’s normally, ‘Just get the thing in the blockhole’. So I took a very high-risk option and sometimes they do pay off.

Kemp drove the last ball back at you too, didn’t he? The pressure was still on…
Well, the last ball didn’t come back to me too quickly. He stunned it into the ground and took all the pace off it. So it didn’t rush me too much. And when I got my hands on it and ran to the stumps to stop the single… I was so happy. There was a lot of relief there.
We had a very good evening after that. Some of the boys were still walking round in their spikes at four in the morning in the hotel. It wasn’t like you could have a shower when you got back in the changing room. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was in there with their dog; all the staff – and even Harry Potter was floating around in there. There was champagne everywhere – it was a good evening. Some of the guys were kicked out of 
the hotel bar at six in the morning so they could get ready for breakfast.

T20 didn’t come along till you were 30. That must have been a Eureka moment for you…
It definitely suits the way I play the game – I just wish it had come through about four or five years earlier, it would have been even better. With all the money that’s being thrown about now and all the new competitions, it’s somewhere you want to be and want to get involved with. I do enjoy this format of the game.

You look like the best T20 player in the world. How come you weren’t in the last IPL?
I suppose in the first season they were going for the high-profile names from all over the world. And they wanted all the hype that goes with that. But I have had some interest expressed in me for the next one, so hopefully I can get myself in the mix for a few games over there… hopefully Finals Day would have helped.

How close are you to the South Africa team?
[Sighs]. Well, I represented my country once [in December 2006]. Fair enough I didn’t have a great game. At the time I was playing horrible cricket. I was sitting in the movies when I heard that I was called up – that was the Wednesday and the game was on a Friday. So that was hard work, at such short notice. And I was used in a very different role to what I’m used to. [SA coach] Mickey Arthur knew what I could do – he was my coach in the first two seasons of domestic T20 in South Africa and I had very good tournaments: the second one I was player of the series.
But in the international game, I was sent in at No 10 for the last over, whereas at home I’d been successful batting up the order and having a go. I was quite surprised. I wasn’t bowling very well at that stage either.
Now? I can’t really be bothered. I’ve come to England and I want to extend my career over here. I’m not too perturbed about playing for South Africa now, because I don’t really think it’s on the horizon.

But it’s a perfect time to be a Twenty20 specialist, anyway…
That’s exactly it. You can play IPL, in England, go back to South Africa, go to Stanford. It’s almost got to the stage where you can go round the world playing T20 tournaments and not have to play any other forms of cricket. I’m on a one-day contract with Middlesex – if they need me to play four-day cricket, I’m only too happy. My four-day record isn’t too bad. 
I may have let myself down with the bat but I bat the same in four-day cricket as I do in Twenty20, which can sometimes be to my detriment!

Despite that brutal hitting of Steve Harmison on T20 finals day, when you started out, you batted at No 10, didn’t you?
Like most young bowlers, you only get to bat if you’re really needed. And over the years you get a few opportunities with the bat and if it comes off they start to use you a bit more. That’s what happened for me. I started off down the order at No 10 and worked my way up to pinch-hitting roles in one-day cricket. And it seemed to work quite well.

You only debuted in first-class cricket at 24 – was it a struggle to break through?
Yeah – I just floated around a bit after school, went to varsity for a bit and all sorts. I just couldn’t get a breakthrough where I was. I was just enjoying life and
going nowhere in a hurry. All I wanted to do was play cricket. I’d played at various academies and not really been given the opportunity to take it to the next level. Then I had the chance to go down to the Border cricket academy in East London and Richard Pybus gave me my break in first-class cricket. He saw something in me and gave me that opportunity. And when you get that opportunity, you grab it with both hands.