Boycott batting for home-grown Yorkshire policy

GEOFF BOYCOTT has pledged Yorkshire will not press the panic button and abandon their policy of fielding home-grown youngsters despite a challenging season for the White Rose club.

Boycott has promised Yorkshire will stick to their guns and develop their own stars rather than look to find quick-fix solutions from outside the county.

Yorkshire have struggled on all fronts this year with mostly inexperienced home-grown cricketers.

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They face a County Championship relegation fight and appear unlikely to qualify for the knockout stages of the Twenty20 Cup and CB40 competition.

But Boycott, a Yorkshire board member, stressed the solution was not to go heavily down the Kolpak/overseas route but to keep faith with the club’s burgeoning youngsters.

Several of those helped Yorkshire to within a whisker of the Championship crown last summer and Boycott said the club would not lose their nerve just because times were currently tough.

He backed those youngsters to learn from their experiences and insisted Yorkshire were creating a family atmosphere in which the players want to play for – and stay with – the club.

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The former Yorkshire and England opening batsman made his comments after casting an eye over the latest Yorkshire Academy crop at Headingley Carnegie, where he praised the work being done by Academy director and bowling coach Steve Oldham.

“It may be tough at the moment, but I’m confident the policy of bringing through our own players will pay off,” said Boycott.

“It’s not just me; the board as a whole believe the right way to go is to produce as many of our home-grown players as possible.

“It may take a bit of time to achieve success but it’s better than buying in four or five Kolpak players from abroad.

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“I don’t want that, and I don’t think the members do either. I think I understand the Yorkshire members a little bit, and they’ve always been very good to me.

“They’ve even fought for my job over the years, and I don’t think they want to see four or five Kolpak players brought in.

“They might wear one Kolpak player and an overseas player, perhaps, but they want most of the players to be Yorkshire – not necessarily born and bred, but players who have grown up through the Academy and who are part of our system.”

No club have traditionally placed more stock on developing their own than Yorkshire.

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They were the last county to admit overseas players and this summer have often fielded 10 Yorkshire-born players in their line-up.

Options to recruit from outside are limited due to debts of around £18m, which explains why Yorkshire are operating without an overseas player.

However, Yorkshire would rather stand or fall with their own players and the impression is of a club trying to move forward in the right way.

“Steve Oldham has done a fantastic job with the Academy,” added Boycott.

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“He has brought some top players through over the years and we think we’ve got another very good crop of youngsters coming through behind the ones who are already playing first-team cricket.

“It’s vital that our Academy flourishes and that we continue to produce a number of good players. The likes of Joe Root and Gary Ballance, for example, have come into the side this year and done well.

“Ballance, in fact, is one of the few players who wasn’t born in Yorkshire, but we took him in and he’s come up through our Academy system.

“I’m not saying we can go back to the old rule where you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire; I don’t think that’s realistic in this day and age.

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“But what we can do is get the majority of our players to come up through our Academy.”

Ironically, it has been the loss of the one Kolpak player on their books, South African batsman Jacques Rudolph, which has been the key difference this season, although the club have also been hampered by injuries after boasting a largely clean bill of health last summer.

“It’s been difficult this season,” conceded Boycott. “There’s been injuries to two of our best bowlers, Bresnan and Shahzad, which hasn’t helped because those two have hardly played. On top of that, we lost Jacques Rudolph, which was equivalent to 2,500 runs.

“But tough times show the character in people.

“We’ve got a clear strategy in terms of developing our young players and you’ve got to believe in that – even when it’s tough.”

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Yorkshire return to Twenty20 Cup action today when they entertain Leicestershire at Headingley Carnegie (5.40pm start).

Yorkshire probably need to win their last four group matches to stand a chance of reaching the quarter-finals.

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