He’s Yorkshire’s new ball wizard
Ben Coad is an outstanding, skilful new ball bowler, one who took his 300th first-class wicket right at the end of 2024, helping Yorkshire achieve promotion to Division One of the Rothesay County Championship in the process.
Heading into 2025, he has 302 first-class wickets under his belt in 76 career appearances, with an average of 19.43 catching the eye.
Last summer, numbers wise, was the best of his career to date. He claimed 56 wickets from 12 Championship matches – the best haul in Division Two.
Only once before has he topped the 50-wicket mark in a season, achieving that feat in 2017 – his first full season in Yorkshire’s first team.
He is a talismanic presence in the county’s squad, and it’s fabulous news that he recently signed a new contract, keeping him at Headingley until at least the end of 2028.
Although he has been excellent in the 50-over Metro Bank Cup in recent years, his main impact has come in Championship cricket since debuting in 2016.
It is a significant surprise that the 31-year-old has never earned any kind of England recognition.
Not only is he a major weapon with the ball, he is also a very handy lower order batter – one who doesn’t like to die wondering. He has a best of 69 to his name in first-class cricket, scored in a late 2022 Championship match against Essex at Headingley.
Coad made his county one-day debut in 2013 and his T20 debut in 2015, with his first-class debut coming a year later – as aforementioned.
He quickly nailed down a place courtesy of an impressive breakthrough summer in 2017, when he claimed 50 Championship wickets and was named the Members’ and Players’ Player of the Year. In 2018, he followed that up with 48 wickets in only nine Championship matches.
Coad, who graduated through the Academy, claimed a six-wicket haul in the opening Championship game of his maiden full season, against Hampshire at Headingley.
It was the first of five career six-wicket hauls to date.
The best of them was a 6-25 against Lancashire at Headingley in June 2017. Seven years on, helping Yorkshire secure promotion, he almost matched that haul with 6-30 in the second innings of a victory over Derbyshire at Chesterfield.
UPDATED: Feb 2025.
