White-ball success must be a priority for the new Yorkshire CCC leadership - Chris Waters comment

Since then, 16 of the 18 first-class counties have won at least one white-ball event, with Derbyshire the only other not to have done so.

Considering the size and stature of Yorkshire as a county, and given that the club boasts of a “strategy of high-performance and sustainable success” in its advert for a new head coach, it is a remarkable record of under-performance, one that shocked even this writer when researching how Yorkshire compared to their rivals over that time.

Whoever that new coach is, amid suggestions that Anthony McGrath (who was part of the side that beat Somerset at Lord’s all those years ago) could be set for a return, addressing those white-ball woes is imperative.

Granted, the cricket that has always mattered most to Yorkshire as a club, and certainly to its members, is the County Championship, and rightly so.

But if you are entering 50 limited-overs competitions over more than two decades and not winning any (Yorkshire have also reached only one final in that time, that of the Friends Life t20 in 2012), there is something wrong somewhere.

It’s a poor show even for Derbyshire not to have won anything in that period (surely they could have sneaked a T20 trophy somewhere along the way), but for Yorkshire it is unacceptable.

Yet, here we are, season after season, with the drought showing no sign of ending.

This year, Yorkshire played 21 games across the Metro Bank One-Day Cup and Vitality Blast, if you discount the no-result in the T20 against Lancashire at Old Trafford due to the weather.

They won 10 of those games and lost 11, which pretty much sums them up as a one-day team, their long-running propensity to “win one, lose one” highlighted by their results sequence in the 50-over Cup - WLWLWLWL.

Failure to back up victories like that, slipping from the good to the bad and back again, suggests there is something very awry, perhaps psychologically. Certainly getting to the bottom of it needs to be somewhere near the top of the new coach’s in-tray - not least for the sake of those long-suffering supporters who pay their hard-earned cash at the gate.

Instead, those supporters are told - as they were recently - that Yorkshire are making strides in one-day cricket, with the youngsters making positive progress.

Individually, that may be the case; indeed, it would be slightly strange if young players weren’t benefiting from greater exposure/opportunities; collectively, though, Yorkshire are making no progress whatsoever by the only yardstick that actually counts - results.

Indeed, they finished seventh out of ninth in this year’s T20 North Group, and sixth out of ninth in Group B of the One-Day Cup.

At some stage, you would have to say that such returns – by no means the exception – are simply not good enough.

Of course, one-day/limited overs cricket has changed considerably since 2002, with games of varying duration, the introduction of T20 in 2003, The Hundred in 2021, and so on.

We have now reached the point where the Metro Bank One-Day Cup is widely seen as a development competition, a glorified second team event, if you like, whose primary purpose is to develop young players while the leading stars are away at The Hundred.

The inherent risk, however, is blindingly obvious, for it offers coaches and clubs an easy excuse, one they need no invitation to take. The real art of development is to do so while winning, integrating new blood along the way; there is no reason why one should come at the expense of the other.

One wonders how bothered Yorkshire have been as a club, how readily they seem to accept the lack of white-ball progress year after year.

Indeed, it was concerning, in this view, that Yorkshire rested three players for their final 50-over group game with an eye on the resumption of the Championship next week.

Why were they rested? Yorkshire still had a chance of qualifying - albeit a slim one - with the next Championship match fully eight days away; it was suggestive of a defeatist, some might say soft, attitude.

It has not been all doom and gloom in the last 22 years. Yorkshire have reached T20 Finals Day three times. They have several times reached the semi-finals of the knockout cup in its various guises.

But this is a club mired in one-day mediocrity to such an extent that it has seemingly come to accept, as Bruce Hornsby sang, that’s just the way it is… some things’ll never change.

But change they must – starting immediately.

LIMITED OVERS TROPHIES SINCE 2002

7 – Hants (2005 C&G; 2009 FPT; 2010 FPT20; 2012 CB40 & FLT20; 2018 RLODC; 2022 VB)

4 – Essex (2005 TL; 2006 NWP40L; 2008 FPT; 2019 VB); Leics (2004 T20C; 2006 T20C; 2011 FLT20; 2023 MBODC); Notts (2013 YB40; 2017 RLODC & NWT20B; 2021 VB); Sussex (2006 C&G; 2008 NWP40L; 2009 NWP40L & T20C)

3 – Gloucs (2003 C&G; 2004 C&G; 2015 RLODC); Kent (2007 T20C; 2021 VB; 2022 RLODC); Somerset (2005 T20C; 2019 RLODC; 2023 VB); Surrey (2003 NL & T20C; 2011 CB40); Warks (2010 CB40; 2014 NWT20B; 2016 RLODC)

2 – Durham (2007 FPT; 2014 RLODC); Glam (2004 TL; 2021 RLODC); Northants (2013 FLT20; 2016 NWT20B); Worcs (2007 NWP40L; 2018 VB)

1 – Lancs (2015 NWT20B); Middlesex 1 (2008 T20C)

0 – Derbyshire; Yorkshire

Key: C&G (Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy); FPT (Friends Provident Trophy); FPT20 (Friends Provident T20); CB40 (Clydesdale Bank 40); FLT20 (Friends Life t20); RLODC (Royal London One-Day Cup); VB (Vitality Blast); TL (totesport League); NWP40L (NatWest Pro40 League); T20C (Twenty20 Cup); MBODC (Metro Bank One-Day Cup); YB40 (Yorkshire Bank 40); NWT20B (NatWest T20 Blast); NL (National League).