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All-round efforts that made the county great
(Yorkshire Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Yorkshire's Greatest XI The Yorkshire Post is running a competition inviting readers to vote for their greatest Yorkshire XI. We are asking you to pick your best team from our carefully selected shortlist of 36 players, divided into six categories. This week, Chris Waters spotlights the club's leading all-rounders.
george hirst & wilfred rhodes IT'S a long-standing joke in the Broad Acres that no one knows the identity of the world's greatest all-rounder.
All that can be said for certain is that he batted right-hand, bowled left and came from Kirkheaton.
But was it George Hirst or Wilfred Rhodes? The debate will rumble for all eternity.
When pressed as to who was the greatest of them all, Hirst always maintained that it was Rhodes, while Rhodes always declined to comment.
The only certainty is that the small, stone-built Huddersfield village from where Hirst hailed in 1871 and Rhodes in 1877 produced two men who, pound for pound, stand comparison to any who have played the game.
Between 1891-1921, Hirst scored 32,024 first-class runs for Yorkshire and took 2,481 wickets, while between 1898-1930 Rhodes hit 31,075 runs and claimed 3,598 wickets.
Rhodes's overall career total of 4,187 wickets is a world record that will never be broken. Both men walked through the Golden Age of cricket in the manner of Swift's Gulliver striding through Lilliput.
To contend that Rhodes or George Herbert - for it was never just 'George' - was the greatest all-rounder of all, however, overlooks the Gulliver otherwise known as Garry Sobers, arguably the greatest cricketer to have walked the planet.
If Sobers was indeed unsurpassed, there is no doubt that Hirst and Rhodes were up there on his coat-tails, and that their longevity was almost as remarkable as their triumphs, with both playing first-class cricket well into their fifties.
Hirst, the smaller at 5ft 6ins, was a more open, outgoing character than Rhodes, who was a dour, some said grim individual.
Whereas Hirst was cheerful, good-humoured and with a smile that Yorkshire's Lord Hawke tells us "reached round to the back of his neck", Rhodes was rarely pictured smiling, typically adopting a hard-faced expression.
Despite sharing so much together, including one of cricket's most famous partnerships when they compiled a last-wicket stand of 15 to win a Test against Australia at The Oval in 1902, Hirst allegedly telling his partner, 'we'll get 'em in singles', it appears their admiration for one another was mostly professional.
"We were never buddies," Rhodes admitted. "Perhaps it might have started as professional jealousy. In my early days I had a ball which used to suddenly duck in towards the end of its flight much as Georgie's swerver, but much slower, of course. It was always George that had to have the wind right for his swerver, but I don't think jealousy was the real reason; more likely it was the things he said." Whatever those 'things' were, no comment better sums up their respective philosophies on cricket and life than the famous remark: "There is an old saying that in Yorkshire they don't play cricket for fun. Well, Hirst did and Rhodes didn't. And both were right." Hirst, of whom Vanity Fair contended in August 1903, "he has a good appetite and quite a nice smile", bowled medium-fast and began his run-up with a hop, step and jump.
As a batsman he loved to strike down the ground, Lord Hawke noting that his hitting reminded one of "a kicking horse".
Hirst did the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season on 14 occasions (Rhodes did it a world record 16 times) and is the only player to have scored 2,000 runs and taken 200 wickets in the same season, a feat he accomplished exactly 100 years ago, and which Yorkshire intend to mark this summer with a special exhibition.
When asked if he thought his record would ever be broken, Hirst sighed: "I don't know, but whoever does it will be very tired." The crowning moment of Hirst's 1906 campaign came during a match against Somerset at Bath, when he scored two hundreds and took 11 wickets. It remains the only instance of a player registering two centuries and two five-wicket hauls in a first-class game.
Many regarded Hirst as the father of all modern seam and swing bowling, Somerset's Sammy Woods noting of the bowler's famous 'swerver': "I don't really see how one can be expected to play a ball which, when it leaves the bowler's arm, appears to be coming straight, but when it reaches the wicket is like a very good throw from cover-point." In its day, Hirst's 'swerver' was as celebrated a weapon as Bosanquet's googly, Warne's slider or Muralitharan's doosra.
Hirst coached at Eton College, Scarborough and Yorkshire following his retirement and is credited with having developed the careers of numerous professionals.
Among those who thrived under his tutelage was Bill Bowes, the former Yorkshire and England pace bowler, who said of him: "I have never met a finer cricketer, nor a finer man." Whereas Hirst was a free spirit, Rhodes adopted a methodical approach to his cricket and left nothing to chance.
No stylist as a batsman (Pelham Warner said he possessed only "two or three effective strokes"), Rhodes was still good enough to open for England and batted in every position for his country from No 1 to No 11, his partnerships of 323 for the first-wicket with Jack Hobbs at Melbourne in 1911-12 and 130 for the 10th-wicket with 'Tip' Foster at Sydney in 1903-04 still England records against Australia.
It was for his bowling, however, that Rhodes was principally revered. In addition to any number of wonderful performances for Yorkshire, he produced few finer exhibitions than when claiming 7-17 to help rout Australia for 36 at Edgbaston in 1902, Hirst claiming the other three wickets in what remains Australia's lowest Test total.
Neville Cardus observed of Rhodes's bowling: "He was economical in action, a few short strides, then a beautifully balanced sideways swing of the body, the arm loose and making a lovely arch. He could go on for hours; the rhythm of his action was in its easy rotation, hypnotic, lulling his victims to the tranced state in which he could work his will, make them perform strokes contrary to their reason and intention." Beyond the great achievements of Hirst and Rhodes, as enduring as they are extraordinary, Yorkshire have been blessed with many eminent all-rounders.
From the period of the Kirkheaton pair there was the Honourable FS 'Stanley' Jackson and Ted Wainwright, then a little later Roy Kilner, who represented the county just prior to the Great War and on until 1927, and then Ray Illingworth from more recent times, who scored a little under 15,000 runs for Yorkshire and took just under 1,500 wickets.
This competition also features several players highly skilled in both disciplines who have been chosen in other specialist categories on the strength of their batting or bowling, Brian Close and Schofield Haigh being prime examples.
Throughout this exercise, identifying talent has been relatively straightforward; it is accommodating that talent that has been somewhat more complicated.
hon fs jackson Jackson, who went by the sobriquet 'The Jacker', enjoyed his greatest year in 1905 when he captained England to a 2-0 victory over Australia and topped the batting and bowling averages, for good measure scoring two centuries and winning all five tosses.
Although he played only intermittently for Yorkshire over 17 seasons due to business/military commitments, he still managed more than 10,000 runs and 500 wickets.
Jackson played golf off a handicap of one, was a keen fisherman and was respected in circles far loftier than cricket.
Not the luckiest of fellows, he was the victim of a botched assassination attempt by a Calcutta student while serving as Governor of Bengal, suffered a badly damaged right leg when run over by a taxi following his return to England and also had the misfortune of having his London home bombed by the Germans. In terms of his colourful life and catalogue of adventures, he appears to have been Yorkshire's answer to CB Fry.
RC Robertson-Glasgow wrote of Jackson: "Apart from WG Grace, who won almost total immunity from comparisons, it is arguable that no other cricketer of any country has equalled Jackson in the combined arts of batting, bowling and captaincy.
"He had dignity, not pomp; diplomacy with simplicity. He is a chapter in cricket history." TED WAINWRIGHT Wainwright, our next nominee, was a man of combustible temperament, given to flashes of anger and dark introspection.
Cardus, who received cricket coaching from him at Shrewsbury, recalled: "He was a tall man with a shrewd, lean face who walked as though he didn't care a damn for anybody. There was something sinister about him. Every night he got drunk as a matter of course, quietly and masterfully." Wainwright claimed 998 first-class wickets for Yorkshire, including a spell of five wickets in seven balls in a match against Sussex, and was a much-feared batsman and wily off-spinner.
"Had his command of length been as strong as his spin and break," observed Wisden, "he might have been ranked as one of the greatest of bowlers." roy kilner Kilner, in contrast, was a man of uncommon charm, the almanack noting: "Few modern professionals commanded such a measure of esteem and kindly regard from his own immediate colleagues and opponents in the cricket field as did Roy Kilner." A portly figure described as the 'Friar Tuck' of the Yorkshire XI, Kilner was an outstanding slow left-arm bowler and gifted batsman, whose death from enteric fever at the age of 37 rocked the game to its core.
It was Kilner who summed up the dour Roses matches of his day with the famous sayings, "what we want is no umpires and fair cheating all round", and "we say good morning and after that all we say is 'Howzat!' " He was one of Yorkshire's most popular cricketers.
RAY ILLINGWORTH Illingworth was not great at any particular facet of the game, but he was sufficiently expert in all areas to be considered a great cricketer, leaving an indelible mark at home and abroad.
Rising to the status of England's first-choice off-spinner, he returned 122 wickets in 61 Tests, scored 1,836 runs and led the country to Ashes glory in 1970-71.
The 'thinking man's cricketer', Illingworth's reputation as a strategist was compromised by his three-year spell as England's chairman of selectors, when his stubborn nature was never far from the surface, but his razor-sharp brain invariably placed him at the heart of the action on and off the field.
After leaving Yorkshire in 1968 following a contract dispute, Illingworth joined Leicestershire only to return to his native county as cricket manager and captain.
It was Yorkshire's great misfortune that the finest moments of his career came not when he was at Headingley, but after he had moved to Grace Road, where he captained Leicestershire to the County Championship and a pair of Benson & Hedges Cups and Sunday League titles.
chris.waters@ypn.co.uk The winner of last week's competition to win tickets for the Test at Headingley was Mr F Blakey of Scarborough.
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