I have a nice and Prussian flatmate. So with the Ashes on, I and the other flatmate (an Englishman) have been trying to explain the nicer points of the game to him (with a not so subtle hint that if the Germans had mastered this sport, they would have both the wars). I was attempting to advise him on crickets popularity in England and Wales, when he said “well I suppose the upper class plays it, but who plays it in say Yorkshire”.
In other news, Amy Winehouse has joined the “Just say no campiagn”, the French Army has won a battle and the London Underground is at 100% efficency.
Wait, there are people who still self-identify as Prussian? Or do you also live with a Rhodesian, an Austro-Hungarian and an Ottoman? (Hint: Don’t put your feet up on him! They get upset!)
Anyway, I’ll be interested in hearing the answer to the question of cricket and class. As for Yorkshire specifically, I found this in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_County_Cricket_Club
I wish they had more amateur cricket in the U.S. as I’d love to learn. There is cricket here, but it’s all West Indians and Brits who are very, very good already.
I love the way some people seem to assume that there are no posh people outside the home counties. Not that cricket’s only for the upper classes, anyway, not by a long chalk.
One of the most famous players for England, Fred Trueman, played for Yorkshire.
There are a few worse things to say to a Yorkshireman than saying that Yorkshire is bad at cricket. Actually I am wrong, there are no worse things.
Geoff Boycott was from the upper class?
And about a million others, not least Wilfred Rhodes, George Hirst, Herbert Sutcliffe (only man whose Test average was never below 60), Hedley Verity, Len Hutton, Brian Close, Darren Gough and Matthew Hoggard.
Ah, I didn’t get that the OP was a joke. I am sadly ignorant of the sporting preferences of Yorkshiremen.
However, you didn’t answer my question. Does your roommate call himself Prussian or is that what you call him? Is he a 118-year-old pensioner? Does he realize that the Great War is over?!?
He is a decendant of expelled Germans from East Prussia. Quite a proud Prussian too, does not like Bavaria.
Maybe he was deliberately trying to make your brain freeze up and sputter to a halt.
My current engagement with cricket is this: I live in America, and work with a lot of people from India. As soon as they find out I’m from Tasmania, the next word out of their mouth is…
…“Boonie!”
Much less disorienting than your Prussian, and I suppose not a bad fellow to be associated with. I have cheerfully assimilated and follow hockey (ice) as being the closest thing available to Rugby League in terms of sheer wanton aggression.
You totally misread my post.
Many of us have probably heard Michael Parkinson (Yorkshireman) telling the story of how when he discussed with his father his tremendous success and fame on TV his father thought about it for a while and said “It’s all very well, lad, but it’s not exactly like playing for Yorkshire, is it?”
There are still people who identify as Rhodesian. Perhaps not so surprisingly, they tend to be white.
Sir Fred was briefly a mineworker, lending evidence to the story that when England wanted a fast bowler they would whistle down a Yorkshire pit-shaft, showing a strong association between cricket and the working class in Yorkshire.
Clearly that was an error, and he meant to say, “who plays it in Lancashire?”
(Back when I was very young I lived about 100 yards away from the Headingley Cricket Ground, in the then West Riding of Yorkshire).
I believe that back in the 70’s, people would cross county lines to have their child born in Yorkshire on the off chance that he (assuming the offspring to be male) would show a talent for cricket and then be eligible to play for Yorkshire.
This is true - and for a long time before the 70s also. The first non-Yorkshire-born player to play for them was Sachin Tendulkar in 1992. However, that was under the “overseas players” regulations. English non-Yorkshiremen still could not play. My Google skills have failed me and I cannot find out exactly when things changed for domestic players.
This is a common misconception, I’m afraid.
Probably the first non-Yorkshire-born player to represent the county at cricket was Martin Bladen Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke who first saw the light of day in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, in 1860.
In 1947, Geoffrey Keighley (born in Nice, France) began a 4 year association with the county, although club officials were apparently unaware of his exotic birthplace. The piece about Keighley indicates that he was, at that time, the 31st non-native cricketer to represent Yorkshire. There’s probably a list of them somewhere, but I don’t know where that somewhere is.
Also, and I say this as a Yorkshireman, the Prussian gentleman’s comment ‘but who plays it (cricket) in say Yorkshire’ may in fact reveal some knowledge of the game on his part. We haven’t won a County Championship game since June 2008 and, in consequence, we are currently staring relegation in the face. I suppose we do play cricket but we are not playing it very well right now.
An alternative theory is that your Prussian flatmate is a closet Mitchell and Webb fan. As witness:
Bloody hell!:eek:
But I doubt it. Still weird seeing that.
Also Garry Sobers in 1964 played for Yorkshire in a match against Bermuda in Bermuda.