Yorkshire CCC

I was meant to be at the Sunday of England’s Test match battle with the West Indies at Headingley. I’d been looking forward to it for months as Test cricket in Yorkshire is a carnival party and when the eyes of the cricketing world lock on our wonderful county. As it turned out, life dealt […]

Journalists milled around, shooting the breeze, making phone calls and waiting for a particular car to arrive at Bradford Park Avenue cricket ground. Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s new overseas player, Sarfaraz Ahmed, who captains Pakistan in all three formats, was due any minute to meet the media and talk to cricket fans at the new […]

The advent of day-night County Championship cricket with a pink ball. What would Fred Trueman have made of it all? It was tempting to suggest the historic part of this experiment was not the floodlights or late start times but the presence of all of the England players for their counties. Seeing Jonny Bairstow playing […]

This year’s Bradford Literature Festival takes place between 30 June and 9 July incorporating 400 writers and 300 events across ten days. It promises to be a wonderful whirlwind of literature, debate and entertainment for all ages and I’m delighted to be a guest panellist on 1 July at 11am in Bradford’s City Hall Banqueting […]

Match day at Headingley. Yorkshire v Lancashire in the County Championship. Serious stuff. The walk up Beechwood Crescent tried to lighten the mood with an appeal to ‘Smile Beautiful’ emblazoned in blue (lipstick perhaps?) on a road sign. It was muggy and threatening clouds confirmed that I ought to have paid closer attention to the […]

Liam Plunkett stands up tall on the railing in his aqua blue Yorkshire T20 shirt, puffs out his chest, points that chiselled chin and stares into the distance while the photographer reels off multiple frames. The Yorkshire and England bowler doesn’t grumble when asked to model moodily but flashes his best ‘blue steel’ pose (Zoolander […]

Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s captain Gary Ballance has come a long way in between our interviews that have bookended his Yorkshire career. I first met ‘Gaz’ as a shy teenager breaking into the first-team squad, who eyed my recording device suspiciously and spoke as bluntly as he was to end up treating the bowling from […]

In the aftermath of the hypnotic conclusion to Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s County Championship liftoff against Hampshire, the Friday heroics of Ben Coad felt like another lifetime. The message from Director of Cricket Martyn Moxon and Head Coach Andrew Gale has been for the young pretenders to push harder for a first-team shirt. Cue a […]

Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s overseas player Peter Handscomb is admirably chipper given he got off a plane from Australia the previous evening. He smiles and blinks into the Headingley sunshine before we shake hands and get down to business. The 25-year-old had a blistering start to his Test career by racking up seven consecutive scores over fifty […]

Geoffrey Boycott begins our interview with an apology. I suspect, like a well-paced innings, timing his numerous commitments is crucial but the phone line has been momentarily engaged by someone else: “Sorry…I couldn’t ger im’ off…” The ex-Yorkshire and England batsmen, now firmly established as outspoken commentator on BBC Test Match Special, has agreed to […]