Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Year Book 2014

22 Sheffield Cricket Lovers’ Society What a perfect way it would have been of celebrating Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s 150th anniversary in 2013 if the team had been able to clinch the County Championship title for the 31st time - a figure way ahead of any of their competitors. Having made the running for most of the season they eventually could not match the dash to the finishing line of their northernmost rivals, Durham, and had to be content with second place. It was still a great effort by Yorkshire to get so close after only gaining promotion the previous season but it is perhaps a little too soon to start speculating whether the White Rose club are about to embark on another great period in their history. Since their formation at the Adelphi Hotel in Sheffield in 1863, Yorkshire have established themselves as the most famous cricket club in the world, partly through the string of illustrious players which it has produced and partly through its unparalleled playing record. And is it a coincidence, one wonders, that three of those greatest periods came at time when they were led by three of their greatest captains? Does a great captain make the team great or would a great team still succeed whoever led them? There is general agreement that Yorkshire’s three greatest captains were Lord Hawke, Brian Sellers and Brian Close who between them saw their teams lift the Championship title on 18 occasions, Numerically, Lord Hawke got the most out of his men with eight Championship titles between 1893 and 1908 but he was, of course, captain for 27 seasons from 1883 to 1910 and it was in his early days at the helm that he sorted out the wheat from the chaff in order to allow healthy and sustained growth. Sellers comes next with six title wins between 1933 and 1946, which was virtually the time he was in charge, but it is fair to ask how many more Championships would he have added but for the intervention of the Second World War? Last, but certainly not least of this tremendous trio, comes Close with four Championship titles between 1963 and 1968. He also helped Yorkshire win another three titles by performance alone before he was appointed captain and would his personal tally have been ever greater had he not been shown the door by Sellers, now cricket chairman, at the end of the 1970 season. Surely booting out Close was a major blunder by Sellers who perhaps handled his men less skilfully off-the-field than on it, and Close himself says that Sellers later admitted that showing him the door had been a big mistake. I believe that Hawke, Sellers and Close were all gifted leaders in different ways and that each was a man of his time, but could their teams have performed just as well without them? Certainly when you glance at the men under their command your initial feeling is that they would have been a formidable force under any leader. Just look, for instance, at Hawke’s team which made the record County score of 887 against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in the Championship-winning season of 1896: The Rt Hon F.S. Jackson (scored 117 in this match and was one of the greatest amateur cricketers of all time as well as an inspirational England captain) John Tunnicliffe (a great runs accumulator, the Geoff Boycott of his day) John Thomas Brown Senior (twice made scores of over 300) David Denton (the second heaviest scorer in Yorkshire’s history and the make of 1,000-plus runs in 20 seasons) Robert Moorhouse (one of the greatest cover points of all time) Did their Captains make these teams great? By DAVID WARNER twitter: @scloverssociety