Sporting Bygones: John Player trophy success provides welcome relief from Yorkshire turmoil

Take the Eighties, the period which for many will be remembered only for the civil wars which made Yorkshire cricket the source of much entertainment for the rest of the country but which caused divisions which only now, more than two decades on, have healed.

Those were the days when Yorkshire fielded a team comprising only players born in the county, when they played home games at Hull, Bradford, Middlesbrough, Harrogate and Sheffield as well as Headingley and Scarborough and when the knack of winning trophies had been mislaid.

Yorkshire cricket celebrated its 150th anniversary in the summer of 1983 but there was little to cheer in the County Championship, the side finishing 17th and last in the table, a bizarre, embarrassing outcome for a team so richly endowed with talent.

But there was, among the clouds, one shaft of light; Yorkshire won the John Player Special trophy – their first silverware since the Gillette Cup of 1969 and their last until the championship itself was won in 2001.

Those in the county – and there were many – who still scorned the 40-over game kept their counsel; with all their troubles – and there was much worse to come – Yorkshire cricket needed a little relief.

There was a hint of irony in the fact that the Sunday League was won without the players taking the field. Their match against Essex at Chelmsford was washed out but their record over the season, particularly their away form (they had won two more matches on the road than Somerset, their closest challengers) meant that the title was theirs.

All-rounder Neil Hartley was one of the established players in a side which blended the experience and quality of men like Raymond Illingworth, the captain, Geoffrey Boycott, David Bairstow, Graham Stevenson and Phil Carrick and youngsters of huge potential like Kevin Sharp and Bill Athey.

Hartley remembers that day at Chelmsford. "We could only sit in the dressing room and watch it rain," he says.

"We knew we would win the trophy if the game was washed out and Essex were more concerned about taking enough bonus points from the championship game which would continue the next day so they could take the title. There was no real desire to go ahead with the game."

Illingworth and Carrick had been key performers in Yorkshire's success. Hartley recalled: "In one game – against Middlesex at Hull – Illy took four wickets for six runs in his eight overs and we won on a faster scoring rate. He and Phil Carrick bowled superbly all season, so did young Simon Dennis, who opened the bowling in virtually every game and never went for more than four an over.

"Illingworth was so influential as captain, too. He had a fantastic tactical appreciation of the game and that bit of nous gave us a vital edge; we won four or five really tight games and, in the end, that made the difference.

"He also won the toss 12 times that season and put the opposition in every time; amazingly, we won 11 of those matches when we batted second."

A personal highlight for Hartley was the match against Hampshire at Middlesbrough. "We needed 150 off the last 15 overs to win and Jim Love and I knocked them off," he remembers. "They had bowled Malcolm Marshall for his eight overs at the start of the innings so had Tim Tremlett and Mark Nicholas on at the end. We managed to score at 10 an over and we won with two balls to spare."

But how could a side capable of winning a trophy finish bottom of the County Championship? "In those days every other county had top-quality overseas players – like Joel Garner and Viv Richards at Somerset, Wayne Daniel at Middlesex – and we were still picking only Yorkshire lads," says Hartley. "But that is not an entirely valid excuse. Maybe we didn't go about things in the right way. We certainly had some good players but perhaps we weren't professional enough.

"We should never have finished bottom but we somehow found it easier to go out and compete in the short form of the game.

"We possibly had too much of a negative view of the first-class game. Essex, for example, were a great side. They had top players like Graham Gooch, John Lever – who was outstanding all summer – David East, Kenny McEwan and Norbert Phillip. They were hard to beat on the field but afterwards they were a good bunch of lads, you couldn't hope to meet a more sociable group

"Maybe we could have done things differently but you can only do your own thing in your own time. We didn't win many trophies but we had a lot of fun."

And fun was a rare commodity in Yorkshire cricket in the days when it seemed every winter brought another outbreak of hostilities in a war which went on far too long.