Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Society Year Book 2023

28 He fizzed with ideas, had a myriad of names at his fingertips, then sealed a lifetime friendship by buying me fish and chips at Stumps Restaurant. We catch up by phone a few months after he retired from the game to which he devoted 45 years as coach and administrator. Unsurprisingly, hundreds of tributes have come in for the genial man who progressed up the ranks over decades. Andrew is the last remaining member of the quartet who formed the Yorkshire Cricket Board in 1996, when he was appointed as a Cricket Development Officer. There were no jobs in cricket back then and no job security. Temporary contracts and many hats is the way he tells it. ‘They were very scary times. The four of us had come from a stable job where you got a pension and probably had that job until you retired. It was a leap in the dark. You didn’t know if you’d be back to your old job – but they were the most exciting times.’ Andrew Watson: 45 YEARS IN YORKSHIRE CRICKET by JOHN FULLER of Cricket Yorkshire I first met And rew Watson, the former Managing Director of the Yorkshire Cricket Board, at Headingley to talk about Cricket Yorkshire.