The football season may be opening for many this weekend and the major summer events such as the Open and Wimbledon are long gone but there is still much to play for in our national summer game. In the Broad Acres of Yorkshire hope is high for a back-to-back championship double for the first time in 47 years.
Yorkshire County Cricket Club dominated the 1960s with six titles but years of plenty were followed by many more of famine and only one further championship until last year when, under Australian coach Jason Gillespie, the White Rose flourished again in the cricketing garden. Gillespie has restored pride and organisation to England’s and cricket’s largest county and it was heartening to see the 2014 title secured with many home-grown players from the county’s academy system.
A strong Yorkshire means a strong England, or so the old adage goes. Well, England called and six players went in the tour party to the West Indies in April and early May 2015. This meant that a depleted squad started the new English season with the LV=County Championship beginning on 12th April. Frustratingly for Yorkshire fans, only Joe Root and Gary Ballance played an active part in the Caribbean with batsmen Adam Lyth and Jonny Bairstow and bowlers Liam Plunkett and Adil Rashid having to watch on. Not to worry, back in England the Yorkshire squad came good in their absence and Gillespie’s men began their Championship defence with two wins and two draws.
The modern cricket calendar weaves in and out of the three main competitions — an arrangement that has been operating for some years. With the arrival of Aussie World Cup one-day heroes Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell hopes were high in the T20 Blast so a return of five wins in fourteen games was ultimately a disappointment, leaving the county second bottom of the North Group.
The Royal London One-Day Cup, fifty overs each, currently holds hope of a quarter-final place but there is no doubting the main priority for the Yorkshire fans. The faster sports car competitions are fine but the County Championship is still the Rolls Royce and inconsistent results in the shorter forms of the game failed to deter the side in their quest for the second successive title. Indeed, the team played their most convincing cricket over four days.
Results got even better with five wins and a draw producing a healthy lead of thirty-four points with a game in hand by the beginning of August. Bairstow put his Caribbean disappointment behind him to embark on the form of his life and returned to England colours for the third Ashes Test. The son of former Yorkshire and England wicket-keeper David, Jonny battered the selectors’ door down rather than knocking on it. Conversely, Ballance returned to the County scene after indifferent results against the Aussies but England’s loss was Yorkshire’s gain.
There were enough heroes beyond England colours to keep the rose in bloom. Andrew Gale, Alex Lees, Tim Bresnan and Jack Leaning delivered with the bat and there was a bowler for every occasion — Jack Brooks, Steven Patterson, Bresnan, Rashid and the indefatigable 37-year-old Ryan Sidebottom.
York’s Matthew Fisher, twenty years younger than Sidebottom, is the next star to emerge off the assembly line. He is a young bowler of rich promise who illustrates the strong continuity in place at this club. Yorkshire are the team the cricketing world is talking about and who would back against them to complete the Championship double come September.
The first of the last six games takes place this weekend, against third-placed Durham in the quintessentially English festival at Scarborough. After that, Middlesex away appears to be the toughest game on paper with the other matches involving sides currently in the bottom half of Division One – Sussex home and away, Somerset at home and Hampshire away. There will be hope and confidence within the team and supporters that it can be mission accomplished. Progress in the Royal London 50 over competition will be seen as a bonus and a home win in the last group game, at home to Northamptonshire, will secure a quarter-final place.
All fans of the White Rose will be joyous at progress over the last couple of years and relieved that coach Gillespie, touted by England, was not given the nod by Andrew Strauss to take over the national side.
