The Benson and Hedges Cup has a special place in Neil Fairbrother's affections. He played in no fewer than six finals and finished on the winning side four times. Perhaps the only surprise is that he was twice on the losing side, for he was one of the best one-day players of his generation and played for a team, Lancashire, who were the dominant force in limited-overs cricket for a long period.

Although he made his debut for Lancashire in 1982, it is the 1990s that he remembers as being the pinnacle of Lancashire's one-day supremacy. "It was a great spell and I played my little part in it," he says with undue modesty. "Take that decade as a whole and we were probably the outstanding one-day team. We were probably in more finals than anybody else and won more trophies than anybody else.

"It was great, but we had a team full of international cricketers backed up by a super-star overseas player in Wasim Akram. It was just a fantastic time."

Having made his debut in the first team only two years before, he was in the side that won the B&H Cup in 1984 and had the thrill of being in the middle as the victory was achieved. "Obviously it was my first big game and all my family were there. So too were my mates from school because I had not left long before. When I went out to bat the game was in the balance but in the end we won easily and I couldn't wait to hit the winning runs and get off to see everyone.

"I was batting with David Hughes who had played in many, many finals. He came up to me at the end of an over when we only needed about ten to win and he said not to rush it but enjoy it. He said I didn't know how many other times I would be in a final and how many times I was going to win, so savour the moment. I did, because it took another four or five overs to knock off those ten runs. But that's the experience of playing in those type of games."

That was an extraordinary final. Fairbrother was top scorer for Lancashire with 36, while the top scorer in the match was Warwickshire's Alvin Kallicharran with 70 out of 139. Yet the Gold Award went to John Abrahams. What had the Lancashire captain done to catch Peter May's eye? He did catch Kallicharran, but he did not bowl and scored precisely nought with the bat. Fairbrother says he got it for winning the toss!

"When we were listening to the announcement, we thought we'd misheard it at first. And `Aby' was as shocked as anybody, of course. But that was somebody else's decision."

Naturally that first final was a major milestone for Fairbrother, but all six were important. "We went back in 1990 and beat Worcestershire, but got beaten by Worcestershire in the 1991 final. That was a big disappointment to me as I was captain on the day. David Hughes stood down as he felt we needed to strengthen the batting so I took over and promptly got run out for one.

"I was captain again in 1993 and although I got 87 not out, it was not enough and we lost again, this time to Derbyshire by a mere six runs. In 1995 we played Kent with something of a new team. Michael Atherton scored 93 for us and although Aravinda de Silva got a hundred for Kent, we always had it under control.

"I scored 63 in the final the following year against Northamptonshire and we had another fairly comfortable win with Ian Austin taking four for 21 in a match and Gold Award winning bowling spell."

Fairbrother never won the Gold Award in a B&H final, but he did manage to pick up ten in other matches and he has the satisfaction of knowing that he was a key member in one of the great teams in B&H history. "We had such confidence from the quality of players that we went onto the field feeling that we could win from any situation, and that was a fantastic experience."

He did not really like the label of being a one-day player, even if it did include the tag of being one of the best batsmen in the world in that form of the game. You can understand his point. He did score 14,761 runs in limited-overs cricket at an average of 41.69, which is a fantastic record to maintain for over five hundred matches. But, on the other hand, he scored 20,612 runs at an average of 41.22 in first-class cricket. It is probably best to call him an outstanding talent in any form of the game.

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