Yorkshire exiles

Posted by Tony Hutton

For as many years as I can remember, during my long cricket watching career, Yorkshire exiles have been finding fame, if not fortunes, with other counties. Obviously at one time this was due to the wealth of home grown talent being produced which meant that many good players had to go elsewhere to get regular first class cricket.  For instance in the late 1940s Northamptonshire fielded Ken Fiddling, Fred Jakeman and Des Barrick. At a later stage many established players were not happy with the financial rewards or length of contracts being offered, as when Raymond Illingworth departed for Leicestershire.

Coming up to date we seem to have entered a more football type era where cricketers change counties at the drop of a hat. Yorkshire now seem particularly prone to bringing in players not only from overseas, but established performers from other counties to the detriment of the continuing pipe line of players produced by the admirable Yorkshire Academy.

 Yorkshire v The Yorkshiremen at Scarborough 1986                                               

My picture shows twenty two Yorkshire born players who appeared at the 1986 Scarborough Festival in a match between Yorkshire and the Yorkshiremen (a team of exiles). Many are very well known personalities, others slightly less well known, and to enable you to try and work through them all I will give the full list at the end of the blog.

To give you a few clues I can tell you that Yorkshire batted first in this one day 55 overs per side match. Top scorers were Ashley Metcalfe and Jim Love, both with 55, and Kevin Sharp (who surprisingly kept wicket) with 50. Best bowlers for the Exiles were Neil Mallender with 3-60 and Steve Oldham with 2-30. When the Yorkshiremen replied they fell just nine runs short, with the unlikely number nine, Neil Mallender, top scoring with 53 not out. Best bowler for Yorkshire was Chris Shaw with 4-19.

It is interesting to anticipate what a game between these two sides would look like next season. It would certainly please some of those who regret the passing of such typical festival games and would produce an excellent team of exiles from the present day. Here is just one possible line up consisting mainly of players released by Yorkshire, with the addition of a young man from Doncaster who grew up in Australia and now plays for Glamorgan.

1. Alex Lees (Durham), 2.Will Rhodes (Warwickshire), 3. Jack Leaning (Kent), 4. Billy Root (Glamorgan). 5. Charles Hemphrey (Glamorgan), 6. Tim Bresnan (Warwickshire), 7. Ed Barnes (Leicestershire), 8. Jared Warner (Gloucestershire), 9. Josh Shaw (Gloucestershire) 10. Ben Sanderson (Northants), 11. Oliver Hannon-Dalby (Warwickshire).  

Unfortunately we would need to ask for a volunteer to keep wicket.

Now comes the interesting bit when we consider what sort of team Yorkshire might field against them. With a little bit of poetic license it is just possible to select eleven more or less current players who did not have the privilege of being born in Yorkshire and played for other counties or countries.

1. Kohler-Cadmore (Worcestershire), 2. Ballance (Derbyshire), 3. Malan (Middlesex), 4. Willey (Northants), 5. Pooran (West Indies), 6. Maharaj (South Africa), 7. Bess (Somerset), 8. Poysden (Warwickshire), 9. Pillans (Surrey), 10. Ashwin (India), 11. Olivier (South Africa).

Obviously these two teams will never take the field, which is all a bit sad when you consider in the good old days we used to have teams like 'One legged men' against 'One armed men', not to mention the likes of H.D.G. Leveson-Gower's XI or T.N. Pearce's XI at Scarborough.

However to put some of you out of your misery here is the full list of players from the photograph above:-

Back row:- Chris Balderstone, Neil Mallender, Steve Oldham, Bill Athey, James Whittaker, Tim Boon, Richard Hutton, Jim Love, Simon Dennis, Stuart Fletcher, Neil Hartley, Martyn Moxon, Ashley Metcalfe, Philip Robinson and Kevin Sharp.

Front row:- Steven Rhodes, Don Wilson, Raymond Illingworth, Brian Close, Phil Carrick, Arnie Sidebottom and Chris Shaw.