The Twelfth Man 2019

George Dobell (L) with David Whittingham 24 25 Also in the audience was Chris Waters, Cricket Corre- spondent with The Yorkshire Post , who was receiving the J M Kilburn Award for 2018 from Society Chairman, James Greenfield. George was receiving the Society’s J M Kilburn Cricket Writer of the Year Award for 2017. Chris Waters (L) with James Greenfield BETWEEN TWELFTH MEN A round-up of events in the cricket world since the 2018 Magazine Adil Rashid joined Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root in being awarded central contracts by the ECB for 12 months from 1 Octo- ber, covering all formats. David Willey has a ODI contract. In early October York- shire took part in the Abu Dhabi T20 tourna- ment. Jack Brookswas the YCCC Members’ Player of the Year after his huge con- tribution with the ball towards the end of the season, despite that he would be moving to Som- erset in 2019. In his time at Yorkshire since 2014, he had taken 60 wickets in a season three times. He will be missed! Jonathan Doidge joined BBC Radio Leeds as crick- et correspondent in succession to Dave Cal- laghan who sadly died just before the 2018 sea- son started. Born in Hors- forth, Leeds he has been in sports journalism for over twenty years. An independent re- port in October into the ball-tampering scandal in the South Africa v Aus- tralia Test in Cape Town in March 2018 laid much of the blame at Cricket Australia for encourag- ing a culture in which players were encour- aged to ‘play the mon- grel’. Cameron Bancroft, large- ly seen as the ‘fall guy’ in the ball-tampering affair, will be Durham CCC’s overseas player in 2019. After a season in which Yorkshire tried three overseas players - Chet- eshwar Pujara, Kane Williamson and Jeet Rav- el - without significant contributions from any, Andrew Gale spoke of the need to ‘relieve the pressure’ on some of the younger home-grown players by exploring the use of Kolpak players. On 31 October the ECB confirmed that Division 1 of the County Champi- onship will be increased to ten teams, with eight in Division 2 from 2020, thus reversing the cur- rent sizes of the divi- sions. Three teams will be promoted from Divi- sion 2 in 2019, whilst only one team will go down. After reaching the final of the World T20 Cup on 25 November England’s women lost by eight wickets to Australia in just over 12 overs. England completed a whitewash in the Test series against Sri Lanka - the first such outcome since 1963. Hampshire CCC an- nounced that a ground in the Isle of Wight would feature as one of their out-grounds in 2019 whilst the Rose Bowl is in use during the World Cup and from 2020 in The Hundred. It is the first time first-class cricket will have been played on the island since 1962.