Memories flood back through the pages of Wisden

THERE has been precious little for Yorkshire’s supporters to cheer in recent times.

Notwithstanding the team’s unexpected achievement in finishing third in last year’s County Championship and reaching the CB40 semi-finals, Yorkshire have gone nine long years without a trophy.

Not since Matthew Elliott inspired victory over Somerset in the 2002 Cheltenham & Gloucester competition have Yorkshire had cause to disturb the cobwebs in their trophy cabinet.

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A club that remains the most successful in cricket history – 30 Championships and all that – has for too long lived on former glories.

Those glories are wonderfully evoked in Wisden on Yorkshire, an anthology edited by Duncan Hamilton.

The former Yorkshire Post deputy editor has won almost as many book awards as Yorkshire have won Championships – and this could swell his own cobweb-free cabinet.

With an eye for quality writing and quirky detail, Hamilton has mined the myriad of Wisden pages devoted to Yorkshire since the almanack’s birth in 1864.

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The result is a nostalgic collection that will remind even the most long-suffering Yorkshire supporters what a truly remarkable history the club possess.

The anthology is divided into 10 themes, beginning with ‘The greatest of the great’ – a series of articles and appreciations on Yorkshire’s cricketing legends.

Hamilton chooses Len Hutton, Hedley Verity, Brian Close, Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth, Geoffrey Boycott, George Hirst, Wilfred Rhodes, Herbert Sutcliffe and Stanley Jackson.

It is a roll call to whet the reader’s appetite and one that highlights a fundamental difficulty for anyone writing about Yorkshire cricket.

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Who do you leave out of the greatest of the great? Happily, the book provides plenty of scope to celebrate all who might lay claim to the title.

The second theme, “We don’t play it for fun”, extols the fact Yorkshire cricket is more than the sum of its parts. “Yorkshire’s story is more than a record of its most famous players,” observed former Yorkshire Post cricket correspondent JM Kilburn.

“It is the story of many strivers, the ‘bread and butter’ cricketers who, day in and day out, made the basis of the county’s cricket, welding themselves into the unit of a team, dissolving their individual talents in the essence of the whole and winning their renown as much from what they represented as from what they were.

“No county ever commanded a deeper loyalty from its players, or its officials, or its supporters.

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“Yorkshire cricket is a private enterprise with a public responsibility, and the story of Yorkshire cricket is an account of the stewardship of that county concern.’

In ‘Follow the leader’, Hamilton celebrates such as Norman Yardley, Brian Sellers, Vic Wilson and Phil Carrick, while ‘The history boys’ brings alive great men of the dim and distant past in Bobby Peel, Louis Hall, Major William Booth, Alonzo Drake, Lord Hawke, John Brown, Tom Emmett, Ted Wainwright, Schofield Haigh, John Tunnicliffe, George Ulyett and Ted Peate.

‘Big hearts of the Broad Acres’ is inspired by a man who fought back from tuberculosis to help England win the 1954-55 Ashes.

“Whenever I hear the phrase Yorkshire grit, I think of the one man who embodies it for me,” writes Hamilton.

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“It isn’t Len Hutton, despite the physical and psychological obstacles he had to overcome, and my profound admiration for him (even though I never saw him play). It isn’t Wilfred Rhodes or George Hirst, who often won matches through the force of bruising will.

“Nor is it any of the more recent characters whose spikes touched Headingley’s pavilion steps, admirable though they may be.

“Bob Appleyard inspired this chapter.”

Hamilton goes on to highlight other big hearts – Chris Old, Martyn Moxon, Willie Watson, Johnny Wardle, Roy Kilner, Arthur Wood, Jimmy Binks, Bill Bowes and Tony Nicholson.

Nicholson was Hamilton’s favourite Yorkshire cricketer.

An “outsider” who grew up just south of Nottingham, Hamilton recalls sitting beside the boundary as a young boy at Trent Bridge and striking up conversation with the former Yorkshire pace bowler.

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“He began to speak to me,” he recalled. “I remember what was said between us in vague generalities.

“How long had I been interested in cricket? How often did I go to Trent Bridge? Who were my favourite players?

“I could scarcely believe it. A professional cricketer was talking to me!

“Nicholson was compassionate enough to bother with a boy he’d never met before and would never see again.”

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The book is even dedicated to Nicholson – “with grateful thanks for a memory of summer from long ago”.

“God’s own country” focuses on Yorkshire’s grounds, comprising a piece by Kilburn on the Scarborough Festival and a farewell to Bramall Lane by Keith Farnsworth, who observes: “Bramall Lane was not among the loveliest of cricket grounds, but to many players and spectators down the years it was the one they loved most.”

“Character and class” celebrates such as Dickie Bird, David Bairstow and Matthew Hoggard; “Honarary Yorkshiremen” assesses the contribution of such as Don Bradman and Ian Botham to Yorkshire’s cricketing history; “Trouble and Strife and Mess and Muddle” is self-explanatory to anyone with a fleeting knowledge of the county’s affairs, while the final theme, “Days in the sun”, is a selection of match reports.

A personal favourite are the quirky items sprinkled about the anthology.

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Of England versus Australia at Headingley in July 1997: ‘Two men dressed in a pantomime-cow costume cavorted round the boundary, and were crash-tackled by officials after play: the man playing the rear end, Branco Risek, needed treatment in hospital. Brian Cheeseman, a university lecturer dressed as a carrot, was frogmarched from the ground for ‘drunken and disorderly behaviour’. He vehemently denied the allegations. Mr Cheeseman has been attending Headingley Tests in fancy dress since 1982.”

Of Kent versus Yorkshire at Canterbury in May 2002: ‘Yorkshire’s reply was delayed by a Ghurkha pipe band, who disregarded the end of the interval and continued marching at long-on, oblivious to the bewildered players and umpires.’

Of Yorkshire versus Warwickshire at Scarborough in July 2005: ‘Just before the end, a spectator wearing an Osama bin Laden mask and with a rucksack on his back ran on to the field; he was ejected from the ground.’

And of Yorkshire versus Warwickshire at Scarborough in July 2006: ‘It was a strange game... sea mist and a distant foghorn provided an eerie atmosphere at the start, and a bizarre fault on the PA system meant spectators were given commentary on a nearby bowls match.’

Only in Yorkshire.

Only in Wisden.