The Yorkshire Ashes Top Ten

After our Middlesex Top Ten Ashes Heroes last month, we offer a selection of ten great Yorkshiremen from Ashes battles past, written by Chris Turner of The White Rose Forum. And some of them are even postwar! But no place for M Vaughan or M Hoggard? They breed them with long memories in Yorkshire... Any other county fan-sites out there who want to do their own list, get in touch.

George Ulyett In the early years of Test cricket, one man typified the saying that Yorkshire provides the backbone to a successful England team: "Happy Jack" Ulyett. He hit the first England century in Australia (149 at Melbourne in 1882) and, in the first ever Lord's Test, his 7 for 36 in the second innings proved decisive. From the inaugural Test, when he opened the bowling and batted at four, to his last in 1890, when he made a match-winning 74 at Lord’s, Ulyett laid claim to being the country’s premier professional all-rounder. Yorkshire pulled him out of the 1890 Oval Test, on account of a pressing engagement with Middlesex, and he never played for England again.

Bobby Peel Peel first came up against the Australians at Dewsbury in 1882, when he took 6 for 41. Thereafter, he tormented them on a regular basis. In 20 Tests between 1884 at Adelaide, where he took 8 wickets on debut, and 1896 at the Oval, where he ended with a match-winning return of 6 for 23, he was the Aussie batsmen’s most feared opponent. Though he became a competent Test bat in the 1890s, hitting 73 in the dramatic fifth Test win of 1895, he will be best remembered as the first player to a hundred wickets against Australia, taking 101 wickets at 16.98 each (or 102 at 16.81, according to some statisticians).

Sir Stanley Jackson "Jacker" played 20 Tests for England between 1893 and 1905, averaging 48.79 with the bat and taking 24 wickets at 33.29. Though his bowling figures seem modest, he four times dismissed Trumper, the Australian champion. Business commitments prevented him from ever touring Australia, but his performances as England captain in the 1905 home series would make him a hero in any age. In five Tests, he scored 492 runs at an average of 70 and took 13 wickets at 15.46. He is the only captain of either team ever to have topped both the batting and bowling averages in a rubber while also never losing a toss. Despite becoming Governor of Bengal in later life, he never quite reached these dizzy heights again, though the man who had been his fag at Harrow led the country to victory in the Second World War.

Wilfred Rhodes Simply a legend of the game. If he had only shared in the opening partnership of 323 with Jack Hobbs at Melbourne in 1911-12, he would have been a candidate for this list, but he was also the greatest slow bowler of the age and took 127 wickets at 26.98, many of them on the Australian "shirt-front" wickets of the 1920s. In his last match against Australia in his 49th year, his 4 for 44 in the second innings proved decisive. Not to be confused with William Rhodes, who scored 1* and took 0-40 for Yorkshire in 1911.

Herbert Sutcliffe Another legend of the game. Sutcliffe scored 2,741 runs against Australia at an average of 66.85. It is generally agreed that he had the best defensive technique of any Test player of his day, and played some of the best innings in difficult conditions (especially on Australian "sticky" wickets). In the 1924/5 Ashes series, he scored 734 runs, including four centuries, at an average of 81.55. In 1930, he bettered this, averaging 87.2. Bradman said of him, ‘He was a great player and he had the best temperament of any cricketer I ever played with or against’. This would be enough for most people, but not, apparently, for those responsible for the ICC ‘Hall of Fame’.

Maurice (christened Morris) Leyland Wally Hammond averaged 51.85 against Australia, Leyland 56.83. He was at his best against the best of opposition – and also in a crisis. Though normally a fluent strokemaker, he is often remembered for heroic, battling innings in extreme adversity. He came late to Test cricket, but, like so many of Yorkshire’s greatest players, he was still going strong when he left the Test arena, his last innings being the 187 he scored at the Oval in 1938. He is also credited with inventing the Chinaman – surely an achievement of world-historical significance.

Hedley Verity The best slow left arm bowler the world has ever seen, with the possible exception of Ted Peate (Yorkshire), Bobby Peel (Yorkshire) and Wilfred Rhodes (Yorkshire). Bradman thought him "one of the greatest, if not the greatest left hand bowler of all time", though Bradman did not see Rhodes at his best. In Ashes Tests in England he took 38 wickets at a remarkable average of 24.47, including 14 wickets in one day in the Lord’s Test of 1934. And this in a period when Australia’s greatest batsman was in his pomp. He died in 1943 from wounds received in the Eighth Army’s first attack on the German positions at Catania in Sicily.

Len Hutton Hutton’s score of 364 at the Oval in 1938 came at the tender age of 22. His 66th run in that innings took him past 7,000 runs in first-class cricket and he would go on to make 40,410 in all. Despite a wartime injury that left him with one arm two inches shorter than the other, he was the dominant batsman in early post-war international cricket. In 1950/51, he averaged 88.83 in the Test series in Australia. As England’s first professional captain, he regained the Ashes in 1953 and retained them in Australia in 1954/55. He is the only known Yorkshire cricketer to have been hymned in verse by a Nobel laureate (the late H. Pinter).

Fred Trueman Thought by at least one Yorkshire cricketer to be the greatest fast bowler who ever drew breath. And several good judges have shared Fred’s opinion, most notably Ashes-winning captain Ray Illingworth. Overall, he took 79 wickets against Australia at 25.3 with many match-winning performances, a statistical record better even than Verity’s. There would no doubt have been more if the selectors had always chosen the England team on merit.

Geoffrey Boycott Another player of recent vintage, but legendary status, Boycott scored a massive 2,935 runs against Australia at the excellent average of 47.5. For all his faults, he gains inclusion as the player the Australians always wanted to dismiss most (except perhaps in one-day matches).