Yorkshire at 150: Love of game that helps make Yorkshire special

Such a milestone is one to be savoured – like a glass of cognac on a cold winter’s night.

For a century-and-a-half, Yorkshire have been entertaining cricket-watchers in the Broad Acres and beyond and providing a wealth of interest and intrigue.

They are easily the most successful county club in England; they are also the most famous and enduringly fascinating.

It was on January 8, 1863 – when the American Civil War was at its height – that Yorkshire County Cricket Club came into being.

The 12 members of the Sheffield Match Fund committee resolved that “a county club be formed”, and although they were not to know it at the time, they had inaugurated an institution that would know plenty of civil wars of its own.

Yorkshire’s first game followed in June, 1863, against Surrey at The Oval, and the biggest club in England was officially up-and-running.

Yorkshire have now played 3,534 first-class matches and had twice as many arguments; their history is as incendiary as it is richly impressive.

Given that they have won only one Championship since 1968, when David Byas lifted the trophy in 2001 amid jubilant scenes at Scarborough, Yorkshire’s salad days are rooted in the past.

That they are still the most prolific club in England (30 outright titles compared to the 18 won by nearest challenger Surrey) shows just how successful they were in the first 100 years or so of their existence; it also shows just how much they have struggled since then to recapture former glories.

But the great thing about Yorkshire cricket is not so much about greatness on the field, which every Yorkshireman and woman hopes will come again under the current regime, as its singular character, for Yorkshire is nothing if not unique. It can be friendly and irascible, forward-thinking and petty, but one thing it is never is boring and dull.

Writing as a non-Yorkshireman (although, as a plea of mitigation, one raised in the county of Lord Hawke), one thing in particular has always struck me as summing up the club’s individualistic streak.

Why, the clue is in the title – The Yorkshire County Cricket Club; no other county uses ‘The’ as a prefix before its name.

It implies both an air of arrogance, a hint of humour (unintentional, of course) and a splash of self-justification, for Yorkshire’s history entitles them to shout from the rooftops.

It is a history remembered and celebrated in these pages, a history its rivals can only envy – apart, that is, from the endless – albeit often hilarious quarrels.

As one charged with writing about Yorkshire cricket for a living, I know only too well Abraham Lincoln’s famous old saying, paraphrased for convenience, that “you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time”, for everyone and anyone has an opinion about Yorkshire cricket.

Lincoln, who was American president when Yorkshire were formed, might as well have been ruminating on the fact that, when one writes about Yorkshire, one can bet one’s bottom dollar that someone else will disagree – unless, of course, one is extolling Yorkshire virtues.

A piece praising Geoffrey Boycott, for example, the most controversial figure in the club’s history, would invariably be followed by a letter – or letters – professing an alternative viewpoint.

Conversely, a piece taking an opposite stance would invite letters of a different sort to illustrate the wealth and extent of Yorkshire opinions.

Boycott, it has always seemed to me, epitomises Yorkshire and Yorkshire cricket.

He is as synonymous with the club as he is with the region.

If the acid test is whether it is possible to imagine someone coming from, or belonging to, any other county, then Boycott is as Yorkshire as Ilkley Moor. So, too, in their different ways – and sometimes not so different – are Brian Close and Raymond Illingworth, as was the sadly missed Fred Trueman.

But the thing that really makes Yorkshire special in my view is its deep love for the game.

It is more pronounced here than anywhere else, and the history of a great club is suffused with a fierce passion for the sport.

That passion burns not only among the people who play it, but also the thousands who watch it year-in, year-out.

The wonderful men, women and children who flock to Headingley and Scarborough are not only Yorkshire to the core but cricket to the core; the game is part of their lifeblood, part of their identity.

The Yorkshire love of cricket is evident even in the way the Yorkshire Post covers the game.

No other newspaper in the country devotes as much space to documenting the fortunes of its county side, which highlights the importance of cricket to the readership and what cricket means to the county in general.

If the Yorkshire Post, heaven forfend, inadvertently leaves out a second XI score one morning, the telephone lines buzz as assuredly as if the paper was giving away free cash.

Once again, this emphasises the passion for cricket in the Broad Acres.

This 150th anniversary is important for two main reasons.

First, for the nostalgia it creates and the pride it generates in Yorkshire’s achievements.

This is a time for reflection and celebration and for remembering why Yorkshire means so much to so many people

The club has a history to be proud of and it is right that it should pat itself on the back.

Second, it is important for those charged with keeping the legacy alive.

It can only serve as inspiration to the current generation of Yorkshire cricketers.

Those men – who performed so admirably last season – are desperate to follow on in the footsteps of fine players such as Trueman, Close, Illingworth and Boycott and to leave their own special mark on the county’s cricketing heritage.

So happy birthday, Yorkshire, and many more of them.

And here’s to your next 150 action-packed years.

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