As the 2017 domestic cricket season gets ever nearer several recent events have helped us prepare ourselves for something that is only about six weeks away.
First of all at a recent well attended meeting of the Yorkshire County Cricket Supporters Association we had a well practised double act of Dave Callaghan, 'The Voice of Yorkshire Cricket', and Martyn Moxon Yorkshire's Director of Cricket.
Dave Callaghan has an unbelievably heavy workload on BBC radio during the summer months, with live ball by ball commentary online on all Yorkshire games as well as frequent reports on all Yorkshire's various local radio stations. He is also in great demand during the winter months as a speaker and MC at various cricket functions throughout the county.
Martyn Moxon is also a busy man. Having recently appointed former captain Andrew Gale as first team coach and decided on Gary Ballance as first team captain, he has also been involved in a trip to Australia and the hopeful signing of Peter Handscomb, the new Australian batting sensation, for the coming season. Most of the supporters seem happy with the first two decisions, but there seems to be an element of uncertainty, as so often, regarding the overseas player.
It would appear that when Handscomb was signed he was not a member of Australia's one day side. Since then his success has led him into all formats and he may well be required for the Champions Trophy competition in England during the early part of the season. His availability later on now also seems in doubt. So this appears to be Mr Moxon's major problem for the coming season and it seems a bit late in the day to find a replacement.
Moxon did make the point that now is the time for some of the younger players to come to the party and to perform well enough at second team level to challenge for first team places. This is particularly relevant for the bowlers in view of the advancing years of the main seam bowling attack.
The next function was the Northern Cricket Society meeting for February at which the guest speaker was Paul Grayson, who was born in North Yorkshire and started his cricket career in the Yorkshire schools system before graduating to the first team as an all rounder. He was a right hand bat and a slow left arm bowler but despite scoring a first class hundred for Yorkshire could not gain a regular place and left to join Essex in 1996. He had a very successful career with them before becoming county coach.
He is now coaching the Durham MCC University side having taken over from Graham Fowler last year. Just before the meeting at Headingley last Tuesday he was being interviewed on Look North TV following his appointment as the new Yorkshire Diamonds ladies team coach for the coming season. This fits in very nicely with the University job as the ladies do not start until after the university term is over.
Grayson recalled growing up with the Yorkshire Academy at the same time as Darren Gough and had a few stories of touring with him in Australia with England Under 19s.
Grayson did very well on that tour with centuries in both Sydney and Melbourne. He also spoke about his two rather unfortunate appearances for England's full one day side in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Flown out as a late replacement to Kenya he was out first ball not long after getting off the plane.
Nevertheless he had an excellent county career with Essex as both player and coach.
Now he is happy to be back living in Yorkshire, with a son who has already played for Essex 2nd XI at Leeds University and a daughter who is trying hard to convert from being an Essex girl to a Yorkshire lass.
Two days later it was the turn of Steve Patterson to take centre stage with the opening event of his well deserved testimonial year in the form of a well attended lunch at Headingley. This too had been organised by the indefatigable Dave Callaghan. The MC duties were admirably performed this time by Harry Gration of BBC Look North.
After an excellent meal, followed by a raffle and well supported auction, it was time for three of the Yorkshire players to step up to the stage.
Bairstow, Brooks, Ballance and Patterson
New skipper Gary Ballance, England hero Johnny Bairstow and bowler Jack Brooks, now trying to become a TV personality, were all in the firing line as Harry Gration tried to get them to say something controversial. Ballance sounded very proud to be Yorkshire captain (and so he should) and didn't say anything controversial but made a good impression. Bairstow, as ever, spoke very well and again said all the right
things and Brooks provided the light relief. When asked which form of cricket he preferred he said he had not played T20 for two years and anyway one day cricket for bowlers was rubbish!
Steve Patterson
All paid tributes to Patto, the workhorse of the Yorkshire side, whose economic bowling as well as his consistent wicket taking has made him one of the backbones of the team. They may take the mickey out of him off the field, such as setting up a spoof Twitter account of 'boringpatto', but they were all full of praise for his onfield contributions. Good luck to him for the coming year.
The final item, hot off the presses today, was the appointment of Joe Root, the Yorkshire batsman as England captain to succeed Alastair Cook. This of course was not unexpected as Root was the obvious choice, but a little uncertainty surrounded the news that Stokes and Broad were being interviewed as well.
Joe Root
However Root now has the job with Stokes as his vice captain. This brought back memories for me from almost ten years ago when I saw young Joe score 88 for England Under 16s against an Australian School XI at Loughborough University. He had a good partnership with young Ben Stokes, who made 50. Also in the England side that day was James Taylor, then of Worcester just before he joined Leicester.
Root at sixteen, looked much younger - about twelve in fact, but in that match and throughout the following season with the Yorkshire Academy side soon proved that he was a class batsman. He may not always have had the power to get the ball off the square some times but that is obviously not a problem these days as he is now one of the world's best batsman. Good luck to him too in his new role, he will certainly need it for what in some ways is a thankless task. Hopefully his batting will not suffer and he will follow in the great tradition of Yorkshire batsman, created by the two men shown below.
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