Yorkshire at 150: Washout enough to secure overdue title

“We were supposed to be playing Essex at Chelmsford but it rained solid and we never got on the field,” recalled batsman Kevin Sharp. “A lot of Yorkshire fans had come down and they were obviously disappointed we never played. But the point gained from the no-result was enough to secure the title and we collected the trophy on the players’ balcony.

“The trophy meant a great deal as the club hadn’t won any silverware for a number of years.”

Success was particularly sweet for Sharp as Yorkshire had no overseas players at that time.

“You’d go around the country and Somerset would have Joel Garner and Viv Richards, Hampshire would have Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall, Notts would have Clive Rice and Richard Hadlee, and so on,” he said. “You didn’t play forward too often because the ball was bouncing around your ears all the time.

“All of a sudden, teams that had not been challenging much suddenly started to challenge. In particular, there were a lot of high-quality pace bowlers around in those days and it made a massive difference to the other clubs.”

Sharp was Yorkshire’s second-highest run-scorer in that year’s John Player League with 345 at 28.75.

Only Bill Athey (391 at 39.10) made more than the stylish left-hander.

“I was in decent form that year,” recalled Sharp. “I’d not long been capped and was playing reasonably well in that period. Although we didn’t have overseas players, we still had a pretty useful side.

“Ray Illingworth had come back from Leicestershire to captain the team, and he was a very experienced leader who knew the game inside out, and it was a great learning curve.”