Magnificent Seven: Yorkshire’s Champions of the Championship Years
By Andrew Collomosse
Includes FREE bookplate signed by Andrew Collomosse, dedicated to the name of your choice. (What is this?)
At the start of the 1959 season, Yorkshire had not won an outright County Championship for 13 years, in those days an unthinkable scenario for White Rose players and supporters. By 1969, they had set the record straight in the most emphatic manner, winning seven Championships and lifting the Gillette Cup twice to establish their place in the pantheon of County Cricket’s greatest teams.
The Yorkshire side of the Sixties featured some of the most famous players in the history of the game: Fred Trueman, Brian Close, Raymond Illingworth and Geoffrey Boycott. And alongside them were the men whose deeds guaranteed them a place in White Rose folklore but whose stories have, for the most part, not been told before. Men like Philip Sharpe, slip fielder supreme, wicketkeeper Jim Binks, who made 412 successive first-class appearances, Mel Ryan and Bob Platt, Trueman’s new ball partners, and Richard Hutton, son of Sir Leonard.
They are just some of the players who will feature in Magnificent Seven, the story, in their own words, of the champion cricketers who shaped Yorkshire’s Championship Decade.
Fifteen out of the remaining sixteen players from this incredible team have contributed to Magnificent Seven. They each take a year to discuss in more and players who are sadly no longer with us are also remembered:
Bryan Stott on 1959 and Ronnie Burnet
Doug Padgett on 1960
Mel Ryan & Bob Platt on 1961 and Vic Wilson
Brian Bolus & Mike Cowan on 1962
John Hampshire on 1963 and Tony Nicholson
Jim Binks on 1964
Richard Hutton on 1965
Don Wilson on 1966 and Fred Trueman
Geoff Cope on 967
Ken Taylor on 1968 and Chris Balderstone
Phil Sharpe on 1969
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"Collomosse has fondly and conscienctiosuly drawn out a host of memories from Yorkshire's greatest era."
Wisden Cricketer, November 2010
"...a very enjoyable book"
The Cricket Society Newsletter Autumn 2010
"Collomosse has...produced a minor masterpiece of a cricket book...There is much talk of the game – nothing wrong with that in a cricket book – but there is also humour, especially from Platt, Ryan and Cowan; humility; sadness, music; high-speed driving; criticism where due; and always honesty."
Yorkshire Post, 28th June 2010.
Click here to read the full article
"It’s an engaging, amusing and highly informative read because the players involved tell in their own words of the team’s achievements and the characters who reigned supreme."
Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 22nd July 2010.
Click here to read the full article
Also featured in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, 8th August 2010. Click here to read the article
“It’s excellent. It’s a pretty true reflection of Yorkshire cricket, both on and off the field, in that period of time. It was a unique period, and I doubt that it will ever be done again"
John Hampshire speaking to the York Press, 12th August 2010. Click here to read the full article
"The fascination of the book is to recall more unsung players such as Bryan Stott, Mel Ryan, Geoff Cope and Bob Platt. All speak of a tremendous team spirit despite the occasional disputes, sackings and suspensions."
Sheffield Telegraph, 5th August 2010. Click here to read the full article
"This is a book that has been waiting to be written for almost half a century...The book is embellished with some excellent photographs, rarely seen, from Ron Deaton's collection. With this work Andrew Collomosse has won a permanent place on Yorkshire bookshelves."
Yorkshire County Cricket Club, June 2010. Click here for full article
"This is a book that has been waiting to be written for almost half a century."
Derek Hodgson, YCCC website, June 2010
To read the full review click here.
"It was a marvellous time for Yorkshire cricket, a golden era that no county has ever come close to matching in over half a century"
Ray Illingworth
"They were a magnificent group of lads, they really were. On and off the field. A team in the true sense of the word. Totally committed working 100 per cent for one another. Above all, we were all Yorkshiremen, which meant such a lot to everyone."
Brian Close
"Collomosse grew up in awe of the likes of Close, Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth, John Hampshire, Philip Sharpe and Jimmy Binks. They and the other members of that all-conquering Yorkshire team were his boyhood heroes, their names every bit as magical as Andrew Flintoff or Kevin Pieterson or Stuart Broad might be in the minds of today's generation of cricket-loving youngsters... That Yorkshire team of the 1960s made such an impression as Collomosse grew up he decided to track down the surviving members to bring fresh colour to his own memories and to hear their take on those glorious years."
Review on The Sports Bookshelf May 2010
For full review click here
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