North/South divide grows wider

 Posted by Tony Hutton

The great North/South divide in cricketing circles may have widened somewhat again this week following an article in the Yorkshire Post by cricket correspondent Chris Waters, which criticised the temporary re-naming of the county championship as the Bob Willis Trophy. His reason for doing so was that the former England bowler and Sky Sports pundit had been over critical in the past of several Yorkshire cricketers.

I must admit that, while being a great admirer of Bob Willis in his role as an England bowler and being present at Headingley on his greatest day in 1981, I did feel that some of Chris Water's comments were valid and needed saying. In particular because Willis was an outspoken critic of county championship cricket for many years and started a campaign, along with Atherton and others, for it to be drastically reduced. To re-name the competition after one of it's greatest critics does seem rather ironic.

However, to be fair, perhaps some of Mr Water's comments were somewhat over the top, as it could be said that many of Bob's criticisms on Sky were not confined to Yorkshire players alone and presumably were encouraged by his employers to be controversial.

Today sees a passionate response from Bob Willis' brother David in the Yorkshire Post sports letters, which normally churn out the same old stuff every week. David quite obviously leaps to his brother's defence, but he too perhaps protests too much suggesting that Mr Waters is a thin skinned Yorkshireman. The sports editor kindly points out that Mr Waters is not a Yorkshireman. I understand he was born in Nottinghamshire and brought up in Lincolnshire.

That is all rather bye the bye. One could perhaps say we should not speak ill of the dead, but although understanding David Willis' natural reaction, if his brother took the view modern day cricketers could all be subjected to abuse he should expect something in return.

All this is rather sad, more to the point we should be reading Paul Edward's excellent article on the Cricketer website about the future of county championship cricket and the hope that it returns in it's full form next season with all eighteen counties still flying the flag. Members of Yorkshire and Durham like myself want to have visits to Lord's, Cheltenham, Canterbury, Worcester and Hove etc etc rather than be stuck with local derbies for evermore.