Yorkshire CCC season review part two: The awards and accolades

GEORGE HILL: Although Matty Revis took the official award, producing a number of fine performances, especially with the bat, and despite another 1,000-run season for the old warhorse Adam Lyth, it is difficult to look past George Hill.

The 24-year-old was comfortably the club’s best bowler and brilliant in the field also, even if his batting was not quite at the standard he would have desired.

Hill took 51 wickets in the County Championship at 16.72, the fourth-biggest bag in Division One at an average that blew away all of his rivals.

He also took 20 catches, the second most by an outfielder in the division behind the 21 of Nottinghamshire’s Freddie McCann. How Hill is not in the Lions squad is a mystery.

BEST SIGNING

IMAM-UL-HAQ (overseas); JACK WHITE (domestic): Imam was obviously the signing of the season, scoring 688 runs in eight innings in the One-Day Cup, including four hundreds and three fifties, as Yorkshire reached the semi-finals. Even that, however, was not enough to help them towards their first one-day trophy since 2002.

White, the seamer signed from Northamptonshire during the close-season, took 42 wickets at 23.14 in the County Championship, second only to George Hill on the Yorkshire list.

With Jordan Thompson and Matt Milnes leaving the club, White looks an increasingly important acquisition.

BEST INNINGS

FIN BEAN: Having made his reputation in long-form cricket, not least when registering a record second XI score of 441 against Nottinghamshire three years ago, Fin Bean showed that he is by no means a one-trick pony.

The 23-year-old left-hander hit the fastest hundred in Yorkshire’s one-day history, a brilliant 53-ball effort against Durham at Scarborough in August.

Bean beat the previous record of 60 balls by Adam Lyth against Northamptonshire at the same ground in 2016, and he also made Yorkshire’s highest score of 2025 - 224 in the Championship against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge.

After a tough start to the season personally, that innings showed great skill and fighting spirit.

BEST BOWLING DISPLAY

MATT MILNES: Back to the One-Day Cup we go for a “magnificent seven” by Matt Milnes, who captured career-best figures of 7-38 against Sussex at Hove.

After his return to Kent was announced at the start of August, Milnes showed Yorkshire what they had been missing during a White Rose career plagued by injury.

His seven-fer was the pick of some excellent performances towards the end of the season, and were Yorkshire’s third-best in one-day cricket behind Richard Hutton’s 7-15 against Worcestershire at Headingley in 1969, and Darren Gough’s 7-27 against Ireland at Headingley in 1997. Milnes’s haul also included a hat-trick.

BEST CATCH

JAMES WHARTON: Although George Hill took a stunner in the final game, running back from first slip to catch Durham’s David Bedingham in the third-man area from a top-edged pull off Jack White, the award goes to James Wharton.

Against Sussex at Scarborough in the Championship, from another top-edged pull off White, this time by Tom Haines, Wharton sprinted from mid-wicket some 30 yards towards the deep square-leg boundary and took a quite remarkable catch over his shoulder diving full-length in front of the Popular Bank, which rose in astonishment.

The competition’s X account described it as “possibly the greatest catch in history”, and who am I to disagree.

BEST MATCH

ESSEX v YORKSHIRE at Chelmsford: There weren’t too many standout games, if truth be told, as opposed to convincing performances one way or the other.

Yorkshire thrashed Worcestershire by 504 runs early on, an undoubted highlight, while they finished the season strongly with another ruthless display against Durham at Headingley.

There was the Matt Milnes-inspired triumph at Leicester in the T20, when he clubbed the last two balls of the match for six to clinch a two-wicket triumph, but it was a flawed contest in the round, with neither side particularly impressing.

So, and although it was surely the most frustrating game of the year from Yorkshire’s point of view, seeing as they dominated for long periods but were unable to force the win, the Championship match at Chelmsford had plenty of drama and tension to commend it.

After setting Essex an excessive 520, the hosts lost only five wickets on day four to finish on 273-9, a missed opportunity from Yorkshire’s perspective but a hard-fought game of First Division cricket.

BEST PARTNERSHIP

MATTY REVIS AND BEN COAD: Yorkshire were not of a mind to let Essex off the hook again when they hammered them by 10 wickets in the return match at York.

They had to work for it, though, falling to 273-8 in response to Essex’s first innings 368 before a ninth-wicket stand of 169 between Matty Revis (150) and Ben Coad (89) changed the complexion and got the hosts up to a final total of 459.

Without that stand, Yorkshire - who had gone into the game at the end of June second-bottom of the table - might have been looking at a costly defeat against a side then just one place and 14 points above them.

As it was, that partnership provided the impetus for one of Yorkshire’s most impressive victories of the season and for a much better second half of the campaign in general, the team eventually finishing seventh in Division One.