LIMITED–OVERS (40-65) MATCHES (LIST A) – 1965-2018
Yorkshire have played 35 matches in List A cricket away to Warwickshire and all 35 have been at Edgbaston. Paul Dyson looks back at the first of these encounters – a tight game in the semi-final of the Gillette Cup, county cricket’s first limited-overs competition. The photo of Ray Illingworth is by courtesy of Mick Pope.
July 16, 1965 at Edgbaston: Yorkshire 177 in 59 overs (R Illingworth 45, TW Cartwirght 3-29, JD Bannister 3-57); Warwickshire 157 in 57 overs. Yorkshire won by 20 runs.
This game was scheduled to start on July 14th but bad weather meant that it could not begin until its second reserve day. Although 65 overs had been allocated for each match in each of the first two years of this competition – it starting in 1963 – this had bveen reduced to 60 overs for the 1965 season.
Both counties had first-round byes; Warwickshire then defeated Lancashire by six wickets and Hampshire by 74 runs, both games being at Edgbaston and Khalid Ibadulla scoring a half-century in each game as well as taking six wickets in the quarter-final. Yorkshire beat Leicestershire at Leicester by six wickets with a half-century from Geoff Boycott and then demolished Somerset at Taunton by seven wickets, the hosts being dismissed for 63, Fred Trueman taking six for 15 in 10.2 overs.
Despite the inclement weather Yorkshire batted on winning the toss but ‘struggled on a drying pitch against a battery of medium-paced bowlers’ (Wisden) and slipped to 85 for six. Ray Illingworth and Jimmy Binks then steadied the ship with a stand of 52 before Trueman hit out strongly. The last three wickets fell for only three runs and it was felt that 177 would not be enough. Illingworth top-scored with 45. Tom Cartwright took three for 29 in his 13 overs (this still being the allowed maximum); Jack Bannister also took three wickets but he was expensive, his 13 overs costing 57 runs.
Warwickshire started well and reached 64 for one, the one being the in-form Ibadulla who was run-out. Thereafter wickets fell steadily and, like Yorkshire, the hosts reached the 100-mark with six wickets down. Illingworth and Don Wilson were exerting a tight stranglehold, none of Warwickshire’s batsmen being ‘able to master the accurate spin’ (Ibid). Panic set in and there were no fewer than five run-outs! Although Illingworth took the match award, partly because of his batting, Wilson’s outstandiong figures of 13-6-15-2 were the more impressive.
Yorkshire played Surrey at Lord’s in the final; this time Illingworth was amongst the wickets taking five for 29 but, famously, the day mostly belonged to Boycott whose 146 remains one of his most memorable, and out-of-character, innings, his side winning by a huge 175 runs.
Man of the Match:
In the entire history of first-class cricket only nine players have scored over 20,000 runs and taken more than 2,000 wickets. Three of these are Yorkshire cricketers and one of them is Raymond Illingworth. (There are definitely no prizes for guessing the other two.)
