Randall C : Metcalf ignores strife to earn home victory

Metcalfe ignores strife to earn home victory

By Charles Randall at Headingley

Ashley Metcalfe, the subject of some unseemly end-of-season contract-wrangling, steered Yorkshire to a comfortable six-wicket victory over Leicestershire, the holders, in the final of the Bain Clarkson Trophy at Headingley. His 93, full of mature strokeplay, settled the one-day competition for second teams - to be renamed the Bain Hogg Trophy next year - in style. Metcalfe, Ray Illingworth's son-in-law, will be 31 on Christmas Day and, age-wise, should not be reaching the end of a career that began with a hundred on his championship debut in 1983. Yorkshire have awarded him a benefit next season, though the terms of a final year's contract were still being discussed at headquarters yesterday while he was taking control of the 55-over match out on the field. Earlier this summer a committee suggestion that Metcalfe should be paid second-team rates - about half his usual level - simply because he would be unlikely to play first-team cricket, caused resentment. His counter-claim for enhanced payments owing since his vice-captaincy season in 1992 - the year he was dropped - has been simmering. Yesterday could even have been his last innings for the White Rose. This is the painful side of the professional game, as talent does not always find the right outlet. Yesterday's man-of-the-match award would have been no consolation for Metcalfe. The outstanding bowler on view was Gary Keedy, Yorkshire's England Under-19 left-arm spinner, who will have to compete with Richard Stemp at first-team level. Yet there is talk at Headingley of Ian Fisher as a younger and more gifted version of Keedy. This is the sort of depth that can boost or burden a county. Yorkshire, so resourceful and dominant in agegroup cricket, cannot seem to take the championship by the scruff of the neck. They boast six players in the England Under-19 side this summer, plus Ismail Dawood, the Northamptonshire signing, but that is no guarantee for the future. Even Leicestershire, with their modest playing pyramid, have had a much stronger championship record than Yorkshire for two decades under the guidance of Mike Turner and now Jack Birkenshaw, a Yorkshireman allowed by his committee to make decisions.

Thanks :: The Daily Telegraph