Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. Ben Coad and his Yorkshire team-mates will return to training at Headingley in the next 10 days.
Yorkshire’s men’s and women’s senior squads are to report back for pre-season training the week after next.
The White Rose men will begin their preparations for the 2027 summer on November 9 and the women the following day.
The vast majority of the men’s squad, aside from those with international commitments, will be spending the first half of the winter at home before specific overseas batting and bowling camps overseas.
The majority of the women’s squad, however, have either travelled abroad or are due to.
New signings James Taylor and Em Arlott will be starting their time with the club on home soil.
As things stand, not one men’s senior player will start the winter playing club cricket in Australia, although that may well change over the next couple of months. There are, however, a host of women’s players who are wintering Down Under.
Alice Clarke is playing for Glenelg CC in Adelaide, Ami Campbell has returned to Sydney club Gordon for the second winter running.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. Ami Campbell is spending her second successive winter playing club cricket for Gordon in Sydney.
Claudie Cooper and Maddie Ward are due to be playing for Prahran CC in Melbourne, Erin Thomas is with Sandgate and Redcliffe in Brisbane, Jess Woolston with Carlton in Melbourne, while Ria Fackrell is due to be heading to the Clarence District club in Hobart.
The vast majority of those players are yet to take the field, with the season not starting until next weekend.
Sterre Kalis and Hannah Rainey are set to represent the Netherlands and Scotland at the Emerging Nations Trophy in Ajman, UAE midway through next month.
Last month, meanwhile, saw Kalis triumph against her Yorkshire team-mate Campbell in the final of the Canada Super 60 T10 competition in Vancouver, with the Toronto Sixers beating the home city’s Warriors team.
George Hill is the first player in the County Championship since 1987 to be his county’s leading run-scorer and leading wicket-taker in a summer.
All-rounder Hill topped both charts by scoring 748 runs and taking 48 wickets for Yorkshire in 2026.
No player has done that for their county since Colin Wells for Sussex 29 years ago.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. George Hill and a notable all-round statistic.
Prominent cricket statistician Andrew Samson revealed that remarkable stat in his recent The Notcher’s Natter blog.
Rich Pyrah’s Melbourne Stars have made a winning start to the women’s Big Bash League competition in Australia, beating defending champions Hobart Hurricanes yesterday.
The Stars beat the Hurricanes on home soil at St Kilda’s Junction Oval, by 18 runs as they defended a total of 192-4.
Pyrah is head coach of the Stars, while former Yorkshire’s men’s overseas all-rounder Glenn Maxwell is part of his coaching team as he recovers from injury ahead of the men’s event starting in December.
The news isn’t so good for Yorkshire’s current women’s overseas all-rounder Jess Jonassen, who has been ruled out of the WBBL with Brisbane Heat because of a hip injury.
The Heat, who include Sarah Glenn, were beaten in their opener this morning UK time by Sydney Sixers in Brisbane. Glenn returned impressive figures of 1-16 from four overs of leg-spin as the Sixers chased 155 to win by four wickets off the last ball of the match.
White Rose captain Lauren Winfield-Hill is part of the Fox Sport commentary team for a competition which is being televised by Sky Sports in the UK.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. Rich Pyrah is boosting his coaching CV by leading the Melbourne Stars women in the ongoing Big Bash.
Winfield-Hill has played three one-day matches for the Queensland state side over the last month, posting a best of 48 not out in a friendly win over Bangladesh.
Yorkshire men’s captain Jonny Bairstow has signed on with the Melbourne Renegades to play in the men’s event, starting on December 12. He will come up against Ben Stokes, who is to represent Adelaide Strikers.
Sam Whiteman is back in action for Western Australia.
He’s currently playing his fifth match of the winter, a four-day Sheffield Shield clash with South Australia, who will tomorrow begin day four on 182-1 at the Adelaide Oval needing 240 more to win.
Whiteman has scored a pair of 40s and a one-day 116 in eight innings since returning Down Under following his first season at Headingley.
Harry Brook and England are quickly back on the horse after their disappointing ODI tri-series performances in Pakistan.
England won one of their four matches against the hosts and Sri Lanka, the pair who will contest the final in Rawalpindi tomorrow.
Picture by Sameer Ali/Getty Images. Harry Brook takes the applause after his record-breaking double century against Sri Lanka in Rawalpindi last week.
Brook did score a stunning record-breaking 202 in defeat to Sri Lanka last week, with fellow Yorkshire player Adil Rashid only playing once in the series due to selection.
Rashid had missed the summer-ending home ODI series against Sri Lanka because of a hand injury.
Brook, Rashid, Joe Root and co will now travel to Australia for three ODIs and five T20Is from November 13 to December 2 ahead of their Test and ODI tour of South Africa either side of Christmas.
Yorkshire duo Tom Bradley and Subhaan Ali have this week been selected in England’s Young Lions (Under 19s) squad for a training camp in Sri Lanka next month and then a tour to Pakistan in December.
Left-arm quick Bradley and fellow fast bowler Ali, a right-armer, are part of an 18-player squad which will be captained by Surrey all-rounder Ralphie Albert, the grandson of snooker legend Jimmy White.
Both players will be part of both the training camp in Colombo between November 19 and 30 and then the Pakistan series in Rawalpindi.
They play three ODIs between December 5 and 9 and then a four-day Test starting on December 13.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. Subhaan Ali, and Tom Bradley, will be touring Sri Lanka and Pakistan with the England Young Lions. Both teenagers have been retained on Yorkshire’s Academy for 2027.
NO BALL…
There have been a trio of notable moves for three former Yorkshire players or coaches already this winter.
Bradfordian Gareth Batty, who came through the junior system at Headingley and made his first-class debut for his home county in 1997, has left his position as Surrey’s head coach to take up a role as assistant coach with IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings.
Batty led Surrey to three consecutive County Championship titles in his first three seasons in charge in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Ex-Yorkshire second XI coach Paul Farbrace has joined Lancashire as their new director of cricket, leaving Sussex in the process.
Farbrace has already made the controversial decision to release last season’s red-ball captain Sir James Anderson.
And former Yorkshire all-rounder Ben Mike has left Leicestershire to sign for Gloucestershire.
Picture courtesy of ACS. Stephen Blades has written the new book, First-Class to Harrogate.
FREE HIT…
Stephen Blades, one of the Public Address announcers at Durham’s Banks Homes Riverside, has published a new book on his home club Harrogate CC, who celebrate their 150th Anniversary in 2027.
Blades has written ‘First-Class to Harrogate’, which was published earlier this week by the Association of Cricket Statisticians.
Harrogate’s St George’s Road ground staged first-class cricket in most years from 1882 to 1996.
‘First-Class to Harrogate’ tells the story of all these matches, from the early days of touring Australian teams, through successive eras of Yorkshire triumph and turmoil, and as fixtures at the popular Harrogate Cricket Festival.
