When Dawid Malan scored 219 against Derbyshire in a Bob Willis Trophy match during the 2020 season he became only the fifth Yorkshire player to turn his maiden first-class hundred for the county into a double century. Paul Dyson looks at how his feat compares with the other four players who were similarly successful. The photo of Major Booth is by courtesy of Mick Pope.
As may be expecting, the feat of scoring over 200 as a maiden century for Yorkshire is very rare but four of the five instances have occurred in the 21st century. This is shown in the following table
INNINGS OF 200 OR OVER AS MAIDEN FIRST–CLSS CENTURY FOR YORKSHIRE
| Name | Score | Opposition | Venue | Year | First-Class match | First-Class match for Yorkshire | Age |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MW Booth | 210 | Worcs | Worcester | 1911 | 24th | 24th | 24 |
| DR Martyn | 238 | Gloucs | Headingley | 2003 | 164th | 2nd | 31 |
| IJ Harvey | 209* | Somerset | Headingley | 2005 | 138th | 9th | 33 |
| JM Bairstow | 205 | Notts | Trent Bridge | 2011 | 35th | 32nd | 21 |
| Dawid Malan | 219 | Derby | Headingley | 2020 | 191st | 3rd | 32 |
In modern parlance Major Booth would be described as a ‘bowling all-rounder’ and, up until the match at Worcester in 1911, the lower order was his status with number seven as his highest position. However, he suddenly found himself at number five, batting above Roy Kilner and George Hirst, and made the most of his opportunity. Wisden commented on him being ‘very strong on the off-side…and hardly made a bad stroke during a stay of over four hours’. At the start of 1911 Booth was not yet an established member of the Yorkshire side. He had made his debut in 1908 but in 1910 still played in only half of the season. In that year he had scored 362 runs in 17 matches at an average of 18.10 and with a highest score of 54.
The Worcestershire game was the fifth match of the 1911 season and Booth had still not yet added to his one half-century which makes his 210 even more remarkable. He shared a sixth-wicket stand of 233 with Hirst, who made exactly 100, struck 23 fours and helped his team to an all-out total of 535 and an eventual ten-wicket win. He finished the season with over 1,000 runs. In 1912 he took over 100 wickets for the first time and in the following season repeated both feats to complete his first ‘double’. With an impressive total of 181 wickets he was chosen to tour South Africa in the succeeding winter and made his Test debut. With the cricketing world now at his feet the 1914-18 conflict intervened far more so than for most other promising cricketers in that 1916’s Battle of the Somme left him mortally wounded and there would be no more double-centuries from the bat of this fine, young man.
