Sporting Bygones: Ensuring Yorkshire legend Rhodes will never be forgotten as memorabilia takes centre stage in Headingley museum

She got talking to a chap who turned out to be a Yorkshire member.

“I’m related to a former Yorkshire cricketer,” she mentioned in passing.

“Oh yes,” said the gentleman. “Who’s that?”

“Wilfred Rhodes,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

She went on to say she possessed many items of memorabilia that belonged to her grandfather and would the club like them?

The upshot of this serendipitous encounter was that Yorkshire’s new £300,000 museum, due to open in March, took delivery of a priceless collection of material once owned by the legendary former Yorkshire and England all-rounder.

There are 293 items in total – ranging from cricket balls of special significance to photographs taken by Rhodes.

They will form a key part of a museum that is a much-welcome and long-overdue addition to a Headingley venue that previously offered scant reflection of the fact Yorkshire possess one of the proudest histories of any sporting institution.

Ron Deaton, the Yorkshire archives committee’s longest-standing member, has meticulously prepared an inventory of each item kindly donated by Margaret Garton, Rhodes’s granddaughter.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before; it’s just a dream,” said Deaton. “It is an honour and a privilege to have sifted through it all, and it must be one of the most wonderful collections in existence.

“There are thousands of pieces of paper in all, and every item is an absolute treasure. For me, it is like looking at the crown jewels.”

Among the most notable items are five cricket balls – some with shield-shaped silver plaques – presented to Rhodes following some of his most memorable achievements.

These include the ball with which he took his 100th Test wicket against Australia, and a ball used during his record first-wicket opening partnership of 221 with Jack Hobbs against South Africa at Cape Town in 1910.

There is also a large leather casket, shaped like a cricket ball, presented to Rhodes by then Yorkshire president Lord Hawke on the occasion of Rhodes’s retirement from first-class cricket in 1930.

The casket – filled with chocolates at the time – was handed over by Hawke on behalf of Rowntrees of York in appreciation of Rhodes’s extraordinary career.

In addition, the collection includes an autograph album containing players’ signatures from many Test and county teams, plus a photograph album boasting 305 pictures taken by Rhodes.

This documents his cricket travels through India during the 1920s and has never been seen outside the family.

One of the more delightful photographs shows an elephant pulling a roller over a cricket square.

“One of Wilfred’s greatest hobbies was photography,” added Deaton, “and when he was married, he converted an attic into a photographic studio at his home in Marsh Grove Road, Huddersfield.

“This is where he would have developed all the photographs which form his collection.”

Born in Kirkheaton, Huddersfield, in 1877, Rhodes personified Yorkshire cricket during the game’s Golden Age around the turn of the century.

He was closely associated with George Hirst, his county team-mate who was also born in Kirkheaton and another of the sport’s legendary figures.

Indeed, so inextricably linked were the pair that AA Thomson, in his book ‘Hirst and Rhodes’, answered the question “who is cricket’s greatest all-rounder?” with the words: “Nobody knows, but he batted right-hand and bowled left, and he came from Kirkheaton.”

It was a theory that brooked no argument in the Broad Acres – at least until Garry Sobers came along in the 1950s, when the great West Indian settled the matter once and for all.

The first-class records of Hirst and Rhodes echo down the years (Hirst scored 36,356 runs and took 2,742 wickets, while Rhodes made 39,969 runs and captured 4,204 wickets – the latter a world record that will never be broken).

As personalities, however, they were chalk and cheese.

Whereas Hirst was warm and gregarious, an avuncular figure, Rhodes was a dour, impenetrable character.

Rhodes abhorred flamboyance of any description and was famously grudging in his praise of others.

Perhaps the closest Rhodes came to compliment was when Neville Cardus once asked what he thought of the legendary Australia batsman Victor Trumper.

“Ee were a good bat, were Victor,” conceded Rhodes – tantamount to a full-blown eulogy.

Rhodes, who died in 1973, aged 96, made his Test debut in 1899 against Australia at Trent Bridge.

He went in at No 11 but eventually graduated to open the batting.

One of Rhodes’s most famous achievements in Test cricket was to help win the 1902 Ashes Test at The Oval.

Rhodes and Hirst added 15 for the last wicket, the latter famously telling his partner: “We’ll get ‘em in singles.”

On the 1911-12 Ashes tour, Rhodes shared a record first-wicket partnership of 323 with Jack Hobbs at Melbourne.

But it was his wicket-taking prowess for which he was famed.

Rhodes had masterly control of length and subtle variations of flight and spin. He took only a few short strides to the wicket before releasing the ball with a beautifully-balanced sideways action. In later years, Rhodes lost his eyesight – an affliction he accepted philosophically.

He carried on attending cricket matches, relying on ear and experience to tell him what was happening.

In an appreciation of the player in ‘Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack’, Cardus recalled: “I last saw him as his daughter, Muriel, and her husband, Tom Burnley, led him out of Trent Bridge at the close of play of a Test match. More than 50 years ago he had first played for England, on this same ground, in 1899, when he was 21.

“Now he was going home to Canford Cliffs, Bournemouth, white stick in hand, arm in arm with his son-in-law, his face ruddy after hours sitting and listening to cricket, and whether he knew it or not, himself a permanent part of the game’s history and traditions.”

It is a part now lovingly preserved in the Yorkshire museum.