Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPix.com. Jonny Bairstow celebrates his century against Hampshire at Headingley in 2015.
“I couldn’t have timed my Yorkshire career any better,” says former fast bowler Jack Brooks as he looks back at a golden period for the county in 2014 and 2015.
In this case, we have picked out an early-season triumph over Hampshire at Headingley, in May 2015, as the centrepiece for a celebration of success.
And brilliant Brooks, now working as a bowling coach at Surrey, was right at the heart of it all.
In the back-to-back County Championship triumphs in those two seasons, he returned hauls of 68 and 65 wickets respectively and was one of the very best bowlers in Division One.
In the said game against Hampshire, which helped set up a title defence, he took seven wickets in a convincing 305-run triumph which also saw Adil Rashid strike eight times and Jonny Bairstow and Cheteshwar Pujara score centuries.
Brooks arrived at Yorkshire from Northamptonshire ahead of 2013 and left at the end of 2018 having taken 301 wickets in 76 Championship appearances, with more besides in white-ball cricket.
“In my six years there, we never finished outside the top four in Division One,” said the Oxfordshire native.
“Particularly those first four years, where we finished second, first, first and third, they were super special.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPi x.com. Jack Brooks, Adil Rashid and Tim Bresnan celebrate the win over Hampshire.
“For someone who wanted to win trophies and play for England, it was amazing. I never got to play for England, but I got to compete for the County Championship and win it. I look back and think, ‘Jeez, I played with some special players’.
“Root, Bairstow, Bresnan, Rashid. You’re not just talking about some of Yorkshire’s best cricketers, you’re talking about some of England’s best of all time.
“Then you look at the likes of the young lads at the time, Lees, Leaning, Rhodes, Matt Fisher, who’s with me now at Surrey, they’ve all gone on to have good careers. Ben Coad, even, who was a couple of years later.
“Being a part of that Yorkshire side at the time, they had a pretty good grounding for how cricket was played.”
Brooks goes on with listing the stars.
“You had Gaz Ballance, Lythy was fabulous and still is, Galey was a very good captain and a good player, Andrew Hodd was a brilliant keeper and one of the most popular players around, and then we had an unbelievable bowling attack. Plunkett, Patterson, Sidebottom was a jet.
“We weren’t just a good side on the field, we all got on off it as well.
“It was just an unbelievable time in my career, and it really did kick me on and made me as a player and as a person. To have those memories, I’m very lucky.”
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPix.com. Cheteshwar Pujara celebrates his century against Hampshire.
In 2014, Yorkshire won the title by 17 points from Warwickshire, having won eight of their 16 matches.
In 2015, they won 11 of 16 matches and finished a whopping 68 points clear of second-placed Middlesex. Their 11 wins and points tally of 268 were both records for a 16-game season.
“When I look back, I kind of sum it up as we were just very good in 2014,” said Brooks. “Then, in 2015, we had to deal with a lot of injury and unavailability issues.
“We were up against it with England selection, losing five or six players a game regularly, then we had a few injuries and things like that.
“Our batting faltered a bit more, partly because of the pitches and partly because of the inconsistency of the team. But Jonny was on a mission and our bowlers really stepped up.”
After Adam Lyth had scored almost 1,500 runs in 2014, earning himself an England Test chance, current Yorkshire captain Bairstow lit up 2015 with 1,108 runs from only nine matches with five centuries.
In the Hampshire game, Bairstow posted 102 off 106 balls from number five to underpin Yorkshire’s first-innings 370 all out having elected to bat.
As the visitors replied, Brooks and Rashid claimed four wickets apiece to bowl them out for 227 before Indian overseas batter Pujara cranked up the pressure with an unbeaten 133 in 305-4 declared.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPix.com. Jack Brooks celebrates a Hampshire wicket with Will Rhodes.
Chasing 449, Hampshire were bowled out for 143 as Yorkshire won their second game in four to make an unbeaten start to the season.
“Jonny just smashed it,” said Brooks. “I remember Fidel Edwards bowling quite quick, and there was a short side towards the members’ (East Stand).
“Him and then Pujara in the second innings just kept hooking and pulling. They were brilliant. It wasn’t a hugely high-scoring game, so those two innings were very significant. Then we just chipped away with the ball.
“It took us quite a long time to bowl them out in that second innings, 74 or 75 overs. Will Smith dug in with Lewis McManus, who was on debut. They were like Barnacles.
“The wicket got better, and I think we only needed a handful of wickets on the last day. But it took ages.
“Will Rhodes ended up getting the key wicket of McManus, which summed us up at the time. He was a young lad who did anything you asked of him. He was playing as a fourth seamer and batting at seven. Everyone contributed.
“Then, Rash, we called him ‘The Hoover’. That’s what he did with tails.”
Brooks finished that game with hauls of 4-57 from 18 overs and 3-31 from 17, opening the bowling with Tim Bresnan.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPix.com. Adam Lyth pulls against Hampshire and continues to go strong to this day.
And on his own performances, under the leadership of Gale as captain and Jason Gillespie as coach, he said: “They gave me so much confidence.
“Headingley just seemed to be the perfect surface for me all of the time, and they said, ‘Even if you bowl badly for a period of time, you’re always playing at Headingley.
“So I knew that even if I had a stinker away from home, I’d be playing the next week if it was at Headingley. As a sportsman, that’s brilliant to have that sort of backing.
“They said, ‘We just want you to have a very simple plan of pitching it up, getting them to drive and trying to get bowleds, lbws and nick-offs.
“I would potentially have a few bad spells in me, but the pay-off was that when I bowled well it would change games.”
Brooks played for six counties – Northamptonshire, Yorkshire and Somerset permanently, plus loans spells as Sussex, Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire.
“I had most of my success with the red ball at Yorkshire,” he said. “It was the best point in my career.
“I have an attachment to all the clubs I was at permanently, but at Yorkshire I felt particularly attached – probably because it was the best period in my career, as I said.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPix.com. Director of cricket Martyn Moxon is interviewed by the media following the win against Hampshire in 2015.
“I was really settled there. It’s actually the only time in my career where I was living in my own home, and I never envisaged leaving unless it was to finish my career.
“Getting capped as a non-Yorkshireman was very special.”
Brooks, who retired at the end of 2023, says it’s been “weird” to either play or coach against Yorkshire.
“It’s still a club I look at and know the people there,” he said.
Which kind of brings us onto another reason why Brooks perhaps felt so settled in and around Headingley.
He added: “It was funny walking into the office when it was downstairs in the pavilion and seeing an Oxford United mug on the desk. I said, ‘Is that for me?’
They were like, ‘No, no, we have a couple of Oxford fans in the office’.
“Howard Ferguson who does the PA announcing was born there and his mum’s a nurse. My mum is too. Andy Dawson as well. He’s left now, but he married Jim Smith’s daughter. Jim’s an Oxford icon.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWPix.com. Jack Brooks, a Yorkshire favourite, is now a bowling coach at Surrey.
“And Josh Wilmer, who is there now working in the media department.
“I was on a train from Leeds to Middlesbrough one day to go up there for an FA Cup game, and he ended up sat next to me as a young lad, and we got chatting. I had an Aussie mate with me, and we had a nice journey up.
“I think me and Josh follow each other on Twitter, and we’ve kind of kept in touch ever since.
“To have some really passionate Oxford fans around, yeah it was nice.”
