Martin Johnson column – There’s nowt like a Yorkie to get you chuckling

Last Monday – and this may come as news to many of you – was ‘Yorkshire Day’. How this anniversary is traditionally marked I’m not entirely sure, although those of us without an umbilical cord attachment to this dark and mysterious place would imagine it involves lots of people dressing up in flat caps, taking the whippet for a walk, and gathering en masse on Ilkley Moor to sing the county’s national anthem: “Eh Bah Goom.”

It’s all a bit odd. There’s no ‘Norfolk Day’ as far as I know, with squadrons of tractors taking to the streets, and the fattest turkey in Bernard Matthews’ flock being offered up as a sacrifice, but once you discover the origins of Yorkshire Day it all becomes clear. It was a giant moan – some kind of protest at a local government revamp in the 1970s – and while Yorkies like to refer to their homeland as God’s Own Country, it has an equally impressive claim to be known as Victor Meldrew Country.

There’s an old saying: “You can tell a Yorkshireman but you can’t tell him much.” But the one guaranteed way of recognising one, apart from checking the wallet for mothballs, is to mention cricket. Or ‘crickeet’ as it’s sometimes known in the TMS commentary box. A true Yorkshireman, as former Daily Telegraph cricket correspondent Mike Carey once wrote, was born within the sound of Bill Bowes.

Many of England’s greatest cricketers have been Yorkshiremen, and after his 254 at Old Trafford, you wouldn’t bet against the name of Joe Root being added to a long and distinguished list by the time his career is done. Personally, I’d order a DNA test to check his credentials first, on account of the fact that he appears to be far too cheerful to be a pukka Tyke, but, as they say in Yorkshire, the ‘lad can play a bit’.

If I was his agent, I’d get him to change his name to something a tad more marketable. After all, they wouldn’t have been queuing round the block at the local to watch John Wayne movies if he’d been billed as Marion Morrison, and it’s hard to conjure up a picture of Michael Caine walking onto the set of Parkinson to the introduction of: “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Maurice Micklewhite.” Although in Joe’s case, the fact that every shot he creams to the boundary is accompanied by a chant of “Rooooooooooot” does have a certain cachet to it.

That cherubic smile, un-Yorkshirelike though it is, gives him an immediate advantage when he comes in to bat, as it winds up the bowlers, especially the quicker ones, to the point where an uncontrollable urge to wipe it off his face often plays havoc with the basic principles of trying to get him out.

I’d also be surprised if the Birmingham nightclub incident wasn’t sparked off by Joe smiling at David Warner, who doesn’t strike you as the sharpest knife in the drawer at the best of times, never mind when he’s become mildly confused by the intake of half a dozen of those Jagerbomb cocktails. All the great batsmen, so they say, pick up length earlier than most, which explains why Root’s reaction time to Warner’s right hook meant that the contact with his chin would barely have registered on either Snicko or Hotspot.

The irony of Root joining the pantheon of Yorkshire greats is that, in the modern era of central contracts, he no longer plays for Yorkshire. Or at least not in the way that the older legends used to combine their county careers with England, such as Fred Trueman, Brian Close, Ray Illingworth, and Geoffrey Boycott.

Yorkshire meant at least as much as England to these blokes, occasionally more. As a county, it came as no surprise when Yorkshire voted for Brexit, and if they ever hold a referendum to leave Britain as well, it might easily result in a landslide. The People’s Republic of Yorkshire has a definite ring to it, with Dickie Bird as president, and zero VAT on fish and chips.

This emotional tie to Yorkshire, despite the fact that people living in Barnsley think that folk in Wakefield have two heads, and vice versa, is in the blood from birth, and there have been times, even in moments of potential crisis for England in foreign fields, when their only thought is for home and their loved ones.

This was demonstrated to me by Ray Illingworth when he was chairman of selectors on England’s 1995-96 tour to South Africa. I wandered out to the middle on the eve of the first Test at Centurion where Raymond, watching the groundsman giving the pitch a good soaking, was become increasingly apoplectic.

“What sort of pitch are you expecting?” I asked. “Can’t tell can I till they give up watering it,” he snorted.

“There’s a hosepipe ban in Pudsey, and my Shirley’s not ‘ad a bath in three weeks. There’s more water gone on there,” pointing at the pitch, “than’s come through the taps in my house since I left home a month ago.”

At which point he fished a photograph out of his wallet and, pointing to what appeared to be a farmer’s field ready for stubble burning, said: “There! That’s what’s left of my ruddy lawn.”

Illy took his role of exporting Yorkshire to all corners of the colonial globe extremely seriously, fortified in the belief that if only Faisalabad’s traffic light system was the same as Farsley’s, it would put an end to gridlock in the town centre. And when back in Britain, the traditional Yorkshire gospel of not paying for substandard services was preached in backward outposts like Kent. Like the time he had ten per cent knocked off the team’s hotel bill in Canterbury when they ran out of sausages at breakfast.

If Root has aspirations to become a true Yorkshire legend, a spot of haggling over his room bill at Edgbaston this weekend would be a step in the right direction, and he also needs to brush up on his self-confidence. He’s doing okay in that department, but no more than that, as the author of Fred Trueman’s biography would tell him if he were still with us.

“We need to think of a title Fred,” said Don Mosey when the tome was nearly finished. Trueman pondered for a moment, and if the pause was required to fight off a rare inclination towards modesty, it was despatched with admirable brevity. “How about?” suggested Fred, “T’Best Bloody Fast Bowler Who Ever Drew Breath.”

This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday August 5 2016

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