Bishop Auckland 1955

By Brian Sanderson

Recently I purchased the above signatures of Yorkshire Second players who were playing Durham at Bishop Auckland on the 17th and 18th of August 1955.England were playing South Africa at The Oval with Brian Close opening the innings and Willie Watson batting at five.

Yorkshire firsts were playing at Huddersfield against Gloucestershire. The signatures are as follows

Ronnie Burnet captain who became Yorkshire captain in 1958.
He was a disciplinarian who always put the interest of the players
first.

K.M. Goddard  who only played two matches for the seconds in 1955.
He batted eight  and bowled six overs.

Ted Lester  who was coming to the end of his career as a first team
 player.In 1956 he got a grant of £3000. He top scored in the
 second innings with 66 out of 164 hitting two sixes and seven 4s.

Jack Van Geloven only played two matches for Yorkshire firsts
before moving to Leicestershire in 1956 where he played till 1965.
He was a seam bowler who took eleven wickets for one hundred and eight.

Bernard Cromack who was born in Rothwell who was a right hand
bat and slow left arm bowler.He batted nine and bowled six overs
taking one wicket. Next year he also moved on to Leicestershire.

Roy Booth wicket keeper seen above at Scarborough with Trueman .This was his final match for Yorkshire before moving to Worcestershire. He could not get into the Yorkshire side because of Binks In this match he topped scored in the first innings with 74 out of a total of 181. He batted over three hours and included ten fours.

The Durham side included Ron Aspinall who used to play for Yorkshire.Durham won the match by two wickets at 5.36 on the second day. Durham finished third in the Minor Counties Championship
that year and Yorkshire fifteenth

When I visited the ground a few years ago a section had been sold off for housing so it would have been a lot bigger in area.It had a excellent club house. It was the home of Bishop Auckland AFC until 2001.