The WRF is pleased to announce CLASSIC YORKSHIRE MATCHES. With the cooperation of Mick Pope and Paul Dyson, co-authors of The Yorkshire County Cricket Club: 50 Classic Matches and 100 Yorkshire County Cricket Club Greats, we will relive the greatest matches in the history of the YCCC. This regular feature will include match summaries, analysis and commentaries excerpted from Pope and Dyson's "Classic Matches" book as well as archived scorecards.

YORKSHIRE vs NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

June 20, 21 1901 at The Trent Bridge

Yorkshire came into this match in magnificent form. The county had won the 1900 Championship without losing a single game – the first team to do so – and had begun the 1901 campaign in a similarly imperious manner. They had won all of their first eight games, four being completed in two days, and by the time that they arrived at Trent Bridge their results totaled nine wins and two draws. Four of the victories had been by an innings and on seven occasions they had dismissed their opponents for fewer than 100 runs in an innings.

Having opted to bat first Yorkshire soon lost Jack Brown but David Denton joined John Tunnicliffe and together they put on a stand of 62. This would turn out to be the highest of the innings as would Denton’s eventual score of 75. Thereafter wickets fell steadily on a pitch on which batting was never straightforward and Yorkshire were all out shortly before the end of the first day’s play. John Gunn, with his left-arm medium pacers, induced a middle-order collapse in which four wickets fell for 19 and he finished with the best figures. There was just time for Nottinghamshire to score one run, off George Hirst, and lose one wicket, to Wilfred Rhodes, before stumps were drawn.

On the following morning there was a delay of eighty minutes for rain and when play resumed Hirst, finding himself unable to get a foothold on the soft turf, was replaced. Schofield Haigh and Rhodes then took no longer than 54 minutes to dismiss the remaining nine batsmen on what was, by now, a very sticky wicket. The all out total of 13 was the lowest for the Championship and only nine scoring strokes (one 4, one 2 and seven singles) were made from the 95 balls bowled.



Wilfred Rhodes had tidy analysis in Notts first innings, taking 6 for 4!

Needless to say, the home side followed on and, with a much-changed batting order, produced a far better performance. Skipper Arthur Jones led the way and he and James Iremonger posted a partnership of 82, in an hour, for the first wicket – the highest stand of the game. Sadly for Nottinghamshire the dismissal of Jones was the prelude to another demise and all ten wickets fell for the addition of only 91 runs. The first two batsmen and Gunn were the only ones to pass double figures with Charles Dench and Isaac Harrison both completing pairs. The latter played in the game only because of an act of generosity on Lord Hawke’s part. After an hour on the first morning Arthur Shrewsbury, regarded as the best wet-wicket batsman in the world, had split a hand when fielding at point and the Yorkshire captain allowed Harrison to replace him.

Hirst did most of the damage in Nottinghamshire’s second innings and this meant that he, Rhodes and Haigh had taken 18 of their twenty wickets to fall in the match. Even though the home side had scored 160 more in their second innings than in the first, it was not enough to make the visitors bat again and the whole débacle was over in less than two days, the game concluding soon after six o’clock.

Six years later Northamptonshire were dismissed for 12, by Gloucestershire, and these two scores remain the lowest for all County Championship games. Meanwhile Yorkshire went on to retain the title by winning 20 of their 27 fixtures, losing only one and, in the competition’s percentage system, gaining 90.47% as against the 50% obtained by runners-up Middlesex. The win at Trent Bridge was the second in a run of seven consecutive victories, four being by an innings. Heady days, indeed. Scorecard



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