Big Ben ready to chime
Fast bowler Ben Cliff has shown significant quality in flashes so far during a fledgling career which he hopes will click into top gear during the 2026 summer.
Cliff headed into 2025 brimming with confidence after a productive winter of club cricket in Melbourne before a progressive pre-season with the county.
He was selected to play in the opening Rothesay County Championship match against Hampshire at the Utilita Bowl but suffered an early side strain which sidelined him for much of the first half of the summer.
At the start of August, he then ran through Warwickshire in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup opener at Scarborough, contributing a first-team career best of 5-46 to a landslide win. In all, he contributed 10 wickets in six appearances as the White Rose reached the semi-finals of that competition.
Tall right-armer Cliff, 23, returned to Melbourne to play for the Greenvale club ahead of 2026.
The bulk of his exposure has come in white-ball cricket for Yorkshire.
In July 2024, he claimed 4-31 during a Vitality Blast clash with Nottinghamshire at Headingley before, the following month, returning 3-37 against Glamorgan at Cardiff in the One-Day Cup.
He has now had exposure to all three formats, though his next aim will be to nail down a more regular first-team place.
Halifax-born Cliff made his first-team debut in 2022 in 50-over cricket before playing his only two Rothesay County Championship matches to date in 2023. He made his T20 bow in the 2024 Blast.
Cliff has been a regular in the county’s second-team in recent years and has also played for the England Under 19s.
He was drafted into their World Cup squad at the start of 2022 in the Caribbean as an injury replacement and went on to take two wickets in a pair of Test appearances against Sri Lanka on home soil.
He made his first recorded appearance for Yorkshire as an Under 14 and progressed through the age-groups to play for the Academy and the seconds.
He contributed 15 wickets in eight appearances to Yorkshire’s Second XI Championship title success in 2022, including a trio of two-wicket hauls during the first half of the campaign. In the trophy-clinching draw against Kent in September, he took a wicket in both innings.
First-team wise, he struck with just his fourth ball in his debut 50-over clash with Northamptonshire at York in 2022, removing the dangerous opener Ricardo Vasconcelos.
UPDATED: Feb 2026.
