FORMER Derbyshire captain and leading batsman Kim Barnett recalls when Derbyshire lost to Australia by 11 runs at the County Ground in Derby in June 1989.

ENGLAND were massive favourites to win the Ashes series when Australia came over in 1989. The Aussies hadn't won an away series for 22 years and were perceived to be shambolic.

They had just drawn the one-day series against England and, only a few days before the first Test at Headingley, Derbyshire faced them in a three-day game at the County Ground.

Worcestershire beat Australia earlier in the tour on a typical early-season niggly pitch at New Road and we prepared a green seamer for them at our place. We really thought we could have them as well.

Australia's captain was Allan Border and he was under pressure for his job.

His response to that was to tell his players they were going back to the old Aussie values of aggressive play and treating the opposition like the enemy.

I was in the England squad for the ODIs but I didn't play in any of them but I do remember Border even refused to speak to his good mates, Graham Gooch and David Gower.

I told our lads before the game at Derby that it was going to be a war but I said we could either keep quiet or get stuck in ourselves, give as good as we got. All the lads decided to play it the aggressive way.

You wouldn't say it got nasty but it certainly made for a match that was quite verbal and very competitive. It was played like a Test match really.

The pitch got them going for a start and they did quite a bit of whingeing about how green it was, which I thought was ironic because they normally have a go at us for moaning.

Bobby Simpson was the tour manager and he had a bit of a go, saying the pitch was sub-standard, and I was disappointed by that because it wasn't that bad. It was just sporty and besides, I didn't see it as our job to give them a nice gentle practice match in conditions to suit them because we wanted to beat them.

We won the toss and put them in and had them 93-5. They were all out for 200 and I was our top scorer with 76 when we got 228 in our first innings.

Ian Healy did a good job for them down the order to score 39 and get them to 180 second time around and we were in lots of trouble at 35-5 but we almost pulled it back to beat them.

The match ended with us 11 runs short when Devon Malcolm was last man out but he didn't think he was out and stayed out in the middle as everybody else left the pitch.

That got him a fine when he was reported by the umpires and showed just how competitive the game was.

A few years later, Steve Waugh wrote in one of his books that this match was a real turning point for Australia.

Border had pulled off a change of culture in the dressing room and after being expected to be hammered in the Test series, they went and hammered us 4-0.

I wasn't in the squad for the first Test when we went into this game but Ian Botham and Mike Gatting dropped out and I was brought back, largely because of the runs I made against the Aussies at Derby.

But even if that hadn't have happened, I would still regard that match against the Australians as probably the best game I ever played in.