The Twelfth Man 2015

24 the last minute. He jumped at the chance to visit us when Society Chairman, James Greenfield, invited him but after Yorkshire had won the LV County Championship he found that his visit clashed with the team’s visit to Buckingham Palace to receive the trophy. However, he was determined not to let the Society down again, so after visiting Buckingham Palace he jumped on to a train to Doncaster and by car to the Society. His career path followed a similar route. He played for all the Surrey age groups, job with the TCCB at Lord’s, chief executive at Nottingham- shire, a similar role at Nottingham Forest FC finally arriving at Yorkshire. During his role at the TCCB Mark introduced coloured clothing to the English game. This had one hitch, the pads were not coloured and had to be covered in paint so he enlisted the help of Gunn & Moore to manufacture the pads. At Nottinghamshire he was the driving force behind the Radcliffe Road stand development in 1997. “Friends thought I was mad to apply for the job at Yorkshire and I was impressed by Colin Graves. I thought that Yorkshire had been out commercialised and put forward my four challenges for Yorkshire. 1) To get a long-term staging agreement for Test match cricket. We now a long term staging agreement and in 2019 we will have an Ashes Test and a one-day international. 2) To redevelop the Football stand at Headingley, which had become an embarrassment. The Football stand will be redeveloped after the 2016 season and will enable us to have an England World Cup match in 2019. 3) Headingley needed to have permanent floodlights. Work will begin on erecting this winter the floodlights. 4) A winning team. Between 2002 and 2014 Yorkshire were the only first-class county not to have won a trophy. I thought last summer Yorkshire were awesome. Martyn Moxon is a fantastic director of cricket and laid the foundations. This will lead to a legacy for a number of years. Jason Gillespie is a fantastic coach and he empowers the players to express themselves.” October 23rd – Clive Radley We were honoured to welcome Middlesex President, Clive Radley to the Society in late October. Clive, who played eight times for England, has had three careers at Middlesex. First as a player, then as a coach and finally as President. He started his playing career with Norfolk at the same time as former Middlesex player Bill Edrich was returning there and it was Edrich who recommended Radley to Middlesex. When he went to the nets at Lord’s it was the first time he had ever been to Lord’s. “I only laid bat on ball twice in 20 minutes in that first net”. Radley was 33 when he played his first Test match. “I thought my chances of playing for England had gone. When the Test squad to go to Pakistan and New Zealand in 1977/78 was announced I was told to be on standby in case anyone got injured, so I went to play in Australia. Then I was told to get to Pakistan to replace the skipper, Mike Brearley, who had broken his arm. When I got to Pakistan I found new skipper Geoff Boycott backed by his players threatening to pull out of the match because Pakistan wanted to play their Kerry Packer players”. Clive also spoke about Brearley. “He knew how to manage people and tactically he was good. He always made you feel like part of the team and that you were contributing to the team. He played 42 times for England as a batsman and never hit a century, but he used to say that he was an all-rounder, a batsman and captain.” “In that Middlesex team we had rows in the dressing room, one time we had to pull Brearley and Phil Edmonds apart but on the field we were a team.” Yorkshire CCC Chief Executive, Mark Arthur, with Society Vice-Chairman Ron Firth.