I went to the annual cricket writers’ dinner this week and, amazingly, no-one cared to mention the name of the England captain Alastair Cook who shortly leads the one-day team to Sri Lanka and who will be in charge for the World Cup.
We must have come to the conclusion that whatever we write or broadcast we are stuck with him, or we have swallowed the belief that he is the only possible choice, and are waiting for the inevitable defeat.
Instead we concentrated on proper cricket matters like the eating of the good beef of old England, drinking the deep red wine of old France and giving all the prizes to Yorkshiremen.
As I may have mentioned before Yorkshire won the championship with a match to spare and despite the last minute ban on its captain Andrew Gale.
He was on an adjacent table so I took the opportunity to ask him about what he said to the South African Ashwell Prince during the match against Lancashire and the two-match ban that followed. In a long life I have learnt that if you ask a Yorkshire sportsman a straight question you will get a straight answer in one of the strongest accents in Britain and you have to be prepared to justify your question.
Captain Gale was no exception. He declined to – as he put it – “take the credit for the victory over Nottinghamshire” which he missed because of his ban but which settled the championship.
“It was nothing to do with winning for me. The lads had fought hard all summer for the title and were absolutely determined to win it,” he said.
Tough but politeHe looks tough but he is polite and affable and refuses to feel sorry for himself. “I know I was wrong to have a go at Prince and the ECB were quite right to punish me.”
In the long run it will not matter. Yorkshire is so strong, so full of good, home-grown cricketers from its own Academy that it will win more First Division championships even though it will continue to supply England with between a third and half the Test side.
The top three batsmen in the national averages were also in the Yorkshire team this summer, led by Joe Root. Jonny Bairstow, a fine wicketkeeper, who was — apparently — not good enough to be in the Test line-up. I hope it has nothing to do with the backing he was given so often by Geoff Boycott but no-one can be sure.
More and more lads from a sub-continental background are getting into the Yorkshire Academy and, remember, that not too long ago they were not welcome at Headingley, although eventually common sense prevailed.
I once got lost on my way to the Academy when it was in Bradford. I asked three or four white lads and they said they didn’t know. I tried a lad clearly with connections in Karachi or Lahore and he told me in an instant.
That is the way it ought to be for a county who have thrown off the daftness — that is an old-fashioned Yorkshire word if ever there was one — of only picking from men born in the county. They might even pick Cook but he would have to learn to embrace what they call The Yorkshire Way.
Don’t ask me what is meant by The Yorkshire Way. Its players talk about it all the time but it’s a dressing room secret and even though Gale and I got along famously he would not tell me, a Yorkshireman through my ancestry, my upbringing and my cricket of rather less than championship standard.
