Yorkshire at 150: Fun times under Close as Yorkshire dominate

IT is Yorkshire cricket’s ultimate bar room debate.

How would the great Yorkshire side of the 1930s have got on against the great Yorkshire side of the 1960s?

The side led by Brian Sellers against the side captained by Brian Close.

It would have been fantasy cricket on a different level.

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According to Close, who presided over four of Yorkshire’s seven Championships between 1959 and 1968, there is no argument on the matter.

His team would have “done” that of Sellers, which won seven Championships in nine seasons before the Second World War – as well as the first title after the conflict in 1946.

For despite acknowledging the great work of his predecessors, which served as terrific inspiration to the players of his own era, Close believes his side had one significant advantage over that of Sellers.

In a nutshell, he feels they had more great bowlers, and points out that “it’s bowlers who win matches and batsmen who save them”.

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The former Yorkshire and England captain made clear: “I should imagine that if we’d played the Yorkshire team of the 1930s in their pomp and we’d been in our pomp that we’d have done them.

“We’d have done them because we knew all the ins-and-outs.

“Don’t forget, to a large extent, they didn’t have a great deal of competition before the war.

“They had two great bowlers in Bill Bowes and Hedley Verity, but we had about five great bowlers.

“What’s more, we were bloody good fielders.

“We had the likes of Don Wilson at mid-wicket, Ken Taylor at cover, Philip Sharpe at slip and Freddie Trueman at short-leg.”

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Readers will note that the list modestly excludes one of the best and certainly the bravest fielder of the lot – Close himself.

“Me? Oh, all I ever did was catch ’em in the cheeks of my arse,” he quipped.

Eighty-two years young in February, Close remains one of English cricket’s greatest characters and best-loved figures.

The cornerstone of his success as captain was that he put the game first, his men second and himself last, which explains why he inspired such devotion from the many great players at his disposal, even if they often argued like cats and dogs for the good of the team.

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And what great players they were: Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth, Geoffrey Boycott, Bryan Stott, Doug Padgett, Vic Wilson, John Hampshire, Ken Taylor, Brian Bolus, Philip Sharpe, Don Wilson, Mel Ryan, Bob Platt, Tony Nicholson, Mike Cowan, Richard Hutton, Jimmy Binks, Chris Balderstone, Chris Old, Geoff Cope.

The list goes on and echoes down the years… “When you think about it, we had some bloody tremendous players and they all knew how to play cricket,” said Close, who played 22 Tests and three one-day internationals.

“The bowlers knew how to get people out and the batsmen knew how to score runs – and often at a quick pace too when we were going all-out for a win.

“And that was the thing with our side – we always went out on the pitch with a view to winning the game.

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“In fact, we often gave the other side more chance of winning with our declarations and what have you, and it was basically our job to rise to the challenge.”

Close, who scored 34,994 first-class runs and took 1,171 wickets, also presided over two Gillette Cups during his time as captain.

He also had a major tactical input into the success that directly preceded him, with Yorkshire winning the Championship in 1959 under Ronnie Burnet and again under Vic Wilson in 1960 and 1962.

Burnet received plenty of advice from senior players when he was appointed primarily to restore dressing room harmony at the end of the 1950s, a decade in which Yorkshire usually played second fiddle to Surrey, who won seven successive Championships.

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Burnet was a limited batsman but he was a fine man-manager and he was “steered” on the right path by the likes of Close, Illingworth and Trueman.

“I had to do the bloody job when Ronnie Burnet was there in 1959,” laughed Close.

“I was also the senior pro when Vic was in charge.

“In those days, the lads used to bloody well listen to me.

“I had to go up to whoever was in charge and say things like, ‘Look, get so-and-so off and put somebody else on.’

Straight-talking and straight-as-a-die, Close has a leadership record that speaks for itself.

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Given Yorkshire’s pronounced lack of success since the 1960s, it seems incredible now that the club sacked him as captain in 1970 – supposedly because of his outspoken opposition to one-day cricket and perceived reluctance to blood young players.

Ironically, it was Sellers, in his guise as Yorkshire’s cricket chairman, who brandished the blade, giving Close just 10 minutes to decide whether to resign or be sacked.

Suitably shattered, Close went off to Somerset and after turning round their fortunes, he bumped into Sellers one day during a match at Harrogate.

“We were both walking round the ground and he couldn’t dodge me,” said Close.

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“Anyway, he congratulated me on doing a good job at Somerset.

“He acknowledged that when he sacked me it was the worst thing he’d ever done in his life.

“Unfortunately, Yorkshire got rid of me just when we were starting to pull things round again after losing Freddie and Ray at the end of the 60s, and that was the end of it.”

If the history of Yorkshire County Cricket Club is essentially the biography of its great players, they do not come any greater than Dennis Brian Close.

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He springs from the pages like a colossus; were he playing today, he would most likely be a megastar and multi-millionaire.

“We didn’t get paid in those days,” he reflected, “we just played the game for love.

“Nowadays, the top players earn far more money.

“If Freddie, Ray and myself and what have you were youngsters now, we’d all be bloody millionaires by the time we’re 25.

“We got paid peanuts in our day but, by hell, we didn’t half have some fun.”