Big Ben ready to chime
Fast bowler Ben Cliff heads into 2025 with significant confidence having claimed his career best returns in both forms of limited overs cricket in the most recent summer.
Cliff claimed 4-31 during July’s Vitality Blast clash with Nottinghamshire at Headingley before, the following month, he returned 3-37 against Glamorgan at Cardiff in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup.
He has now had exposure to all three formats, though his next aim will be to nail down a more regular place in Yorkshire’s first team.
He prepared for the 2025 summer with a spell of winter club cricket in Melbourne with Greenvale.
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 last summer’s Blast.
In all, the tall seamer has played 15 first-team matches to date.
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.
Cliff, now aged 22, 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 2025.
