FAMOUS LINKS

with Hayfield Cricket Club

NORMAN YARDLEY  Captain of Yorkshire and England   

(Sir) Don Bradman, Captain of Australia, congratulates Norman Yardley (right) 

on the birth of his Son during the Fourth Test, 1948

Norman Yardley's Second Son, Ed Yardley, and Grandson, George Yardley, both play for Hayfield CC

During England's Test Series in Australia 1946-47 when Norman Yardley was Vice-Captain of England, Yardley's medium-pace bowling had the great Don Bradman out three time without help from his fielders.

Norman W D Yardley - The Quintessential English Cricketer

YARDLEY'S YARDSTICKS
Norman Yardley, the former England and Yorkshire captain, looks back at his career with Mike Stevenson, and makes some pertinent observations on captaincy (Original article produced from The Cricketer October 1989)

At the time of writing, Norman Yardley, that most relaxed and kindly of cricketers, is recovering in hospital after a stroke and all who know and admire him will want to join in sending good wishes for a speedy and complete recovery.
Predictably he has not found the current Test series particularly restful or inspiring viewing and his views on the contemporary scene are well worth an airing: 'We seem to have so few promising young spinners these days. If I had my way, I would not let a young spinner play in the one-day game until he was mature. The ones we've seen for England this summer seem so obsessed with the bat & pad positions, which rules out the use of flight.
'Even worse is the lack of real status of the captain. Perhaps money has become too important in the game. I'd like to see an altogether tougher and more dedicated approach from our team, though we've certainly seen it from the Aussies. When I watch our bowling, I remember what Bob Wyatt said to me a year or two ago at a Test match: "They change the bowler but they don't change the bowling!'"
 Having grown up in the game with the famous dictum of Lord Hawke ringing in his ears, it is not surprising that Yardley looks back with nostalgia upon the days of the amateur captain. In reply to a contentious newspaper article under the name of Cecil Parkin, Lord Hawke, speaking at a time when the status, authority and respon sibility of the amateur captain were taken wholly for granted, announced uncompromisingly: 'Pray God no professional shall ever captain England'. Wrenched out of context the pronouncement seems outrageous but para phrased it becomes far more acceptable. What Lord Hawke was suggesting surely can be rendered: 'Without in any way denigrating cricket professionals, it would surely be a tragedy for English cricket were there not available a succession of amateurs capable of assuming, and willing to assume, the England captaincy'.

Norman Yardley, as an intelligent man, knows well that the amateur captain has gone for good but he mourns the fact that the authority and, above all, independence of the captain seem largely to have gone with them. However unjust the suspicion may be, it still seems to many of us that the pro who has come up through the ranks is far less likely when he achieves the position of captain to discipline, let alone drop, a friend and colleague, with whom he has rubbed shoulders for years.
Yardley took over the Yorkshire captaincy in 1948 from one of the truly great captains, Brian Sellers. He had earned and had come to enjoy the same sort of rela tionship with his side that had been obtained under Lord Hawke. After the war things were different and Yardley, a whole-hearted admirer of Sellers, feels that he frightened the wits out of a considerable number of young Yorkshire cricketers. When Norman took over, he was faced with the unaccustomed indignity of leading a side that had finished eighth in the Championship the previous season. He was moreover a spectacularly different human being from his dynamic predecessor: 'I really appreciated the toughness of men like Coxon, Wardle and Appleyard. The only problem with them was getting the ball off them! I think, following Sellers, they regarded me as rather too soft and perhaps friendly but they'd learnt their cricket under a man who was a holy terror for discipline'.
To understand Yorkshire cricket, you must look at least at the thirties, when their side was so strong that they could grind almost every county under the turf. Norman Yardley recalls one of his earliest matches for the county: 'We were playing at Bramall Lane and Bill Bowes was bowling superbly on a green top. Normally it took many years of hard graft to qualify for a berth in the slips but on this occasion things were different and I was called up by Sellers to join the considerable cordon of close fielders.

My immediate neighbour in the slips was Arthur 'Ticker' Mitchell who, desperately trying to discover some reason why a green undergraduate should have qualified to join the elite of the Yorkshire side in the slips, enquired of me: "Nah then! Dost 'a know any mucky stories?'" Sellers and Yardley may have been oceans apart psychologically but they had one thing in common. Both were independent. They did not rely on the game of cricket for their livelihood. Norman attended St Peter's, York until he was 19. He was coached there by the Headmaster, Sammy Toyne and the school pro, Fred Roberts. He represented Yorkshire Colts, while still at school and went up to Cambridge in 1934, enjoying what he describes as '... a wonderful apprenticeship, under the most favourable conditions'. He first played for Yorkshire in 1936 and from the following year commanded a regular place in the county side from July onwards. In the '37-'38 season, he and his colleague, Paul Gibb, were invited to tour India and in 1938 he toured South Africa, as vice-captain to Wally Hammond.
When war broke out in 1939, Norman Yardley joined The Green Howards, serving in India, Iran and Egypt before taking part in the invasion of Italy, which cost the incomparable Hedley Verity his life. He suffered a slight wound himself but, following a relatively restful time for the remainder of hostilities, found himself on the second day after his demobilisation at the Yorkshire nets!
As a fine player and clearly heir apparent to Brian Sellers, Yardley was regarded as a key figure in York shire's post-war renaissance. He found a 'job' with a paper magnate, William Harrison, who also 'employed' Len Hutton, Herbert Sutcliffe and Maurice Leyland, working for him for three years, before trying his hand with first a paint firm then the wine and spirit trade.

Thus Yardley, like Sellers, was in no way dependent on cricket. Like Robins, Lyon and Chapman, Sellers and Yardley were not promoted members of a team, as an Australian captain is. They possessed the authority of their position and one cannot help adding: what would the beleaguered England management give for a Yardley or a Sellers now! As a batsman, Norman Yardley's character prevented him from being an 'averages' man. His 11,632 runs for Yorkshire were scored at an average of 31.95 and his 192 wickets, the result of nagging, slow-medium swingers were virtually a bonus. At Test level he averaged 25.37, scoring 812 runs and taking 21 wickets, including the dismissal of the great Don Bradman three times. He remembers now with keen appreciation the sheer bowling talent of Johnny Wardle, who could switch from chinamen and googlies to orthodox, slow, left hand with the utmost ease, and Bob Appleyard, whom he regards as '. . . the perfect bowler'. He regards the most crucial event in post-war Yorkshire cricket as the departure of Ray Illingworth: 'It was a real watershed. If Illy had stayed, he would have become captain automatically and, it may be hindsight, but I'm sure we would have avoided a lot of the problems that have led to the present state of Yorkshire cricket', Ironically, following the debut of Frank Lowson, Brian Close and Fred Trueman at Fenner's in 1949, Yorkshire under Yardley settled into an excellent side but, of course, Surrey, spearheaded by Loader, Bedser, Laker and Lock, were better. Yorkshire were second in the Championship five times during Surrey's reign, third once and in 1955 actually acquired 268 points, the largest amount that the county had achieved under the particular scoring system. Discussing the present state of cricket, Norman Yardley, never a man of extremes, is as balanced and urbane as ever: 'The game has changed prodigiously since my day. I was a decent player of the hook shot but I certainly would not have worn a helmet even if they'd been available. I'd wear one if I played today!'

(Montage kindly supplied by Ed Yardley, March 2007)