A portrait of the cricketer as a young man

On Norman Walter Dransfield Yardley

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Norman Walter Dransfield Yardley was born in Yorkshire on March 19, 1915. The air of Barnsley, thick with coal dust and the honest labour of men, seemed to breed in him a natural resilience, a sturdiness of character that would later find its flowering on the cricket field.

His early education was at Wakefield Grammar School, but it was at St Peter’s, York, from 1930 onwards, that his gifts were first revealed. The school magazines of 1934 and 1935, which I have recently examined, speak with admiration of a boy who seemed to embody the spirit of English athletic youth. Yardley was no mere cricketer; he was an athlete of breadth and brilliance, a figure who could turn his hand to hockey, squash and rugger, excelling in each with natural grace.

The cricketing summer of 1933, his first as captain of the school XI, was nothing short of prodigious. Yardley amassed 973 runs at an average of 88.45. Three successive innings—127, 171, and 167 not out—were compiled with the composure of a man already acquainted with the responsibilities of greatness. With the ball he topped the averages, taking forty wickets at 11.90.

Such dual mastery is rare, and it earned him an invitation to Lord’s, to play for the Young Amateurs against the Young Professionals. There, on the hallowed turf, Yardley announced himself in representative cricket with an innings of 189. It was in this match that he first encountered Denis Compton, who would become his companion in many cricketing adventures at home and abroad.

That same year Yardley came under the tutelage of George Hirst at the Yorkshire nets. The old master must have seen in the boy something of the county’s future. Yardley also played his first matches for the Yorkshire Colts, stepping into the nursery of Yorkshire cricket, where tradition and expectation weigh heavily on young shoulders.

The following season brought further triumphs. Against Weetwood CC in June, Yardley and Newman compiled a record partnership of 232, both undefeated when the innings was declared. It was an exhibition of control and endurance, a schoolboy’s game elevated to artistry. Later, selected for the Public Schools against the Army at Lord’s, he confirmed his capacity for rising to the grand occasion. His innings of 117 and 63 were played with a maturity beyond his years; his century was the first recorded by a schoolboy against the Army. The magazine of that year, with prophetic clarity, declared him “a first-rate cricketer who will be heard of again. He leaves a tradition for keenness and achievement which will live as part of the School’s history.”

Yet Yardley, as I have said, was not only a cricketer, but an all-round sportsman of catholic tastes. In hockey he was a brilliant shot, clever with his stick, though with a tendency to send it soaring heavenwards in exuberance. At squash he twice won the Drysdale Cup, and in the final round of his second triumph played before a packed gallery, defeating his opponent with the loss of only nine points. The magazine declared him, in tones of awe, “surely the most brilliant player to carry off the Cup,” ranking him among the five best amateurs of the day. His game, they said, was flawless, a rare accolade in any sport.

By 1935 Yardley had moved on to Cambridge, where the December school magazine described him as “an elusive bird.” He was always to be found at some game, or driving his Morris “8” about the streets of Cambridge. He was a member of the Hawks, that society of athletic distinction, and was already acquiring the air of the strong, silent type.

Thus began the career that would carry him to the captaincy of Yorkshire and England, a journey that lasted until 1955. Yardley’s story is a rare one of precocity fulfilled: a boy whose schooldays were already touched with greatness, and yet who carried his promise into the highest realms of the game.