page_title: Norman Yardley
section_title: England captain
hierarchical_section_title: Norman Yardley / Career after the war / England captain
caption_attribution_description: Norman Yardley, the Yorkshire cricketer is receiving a massage from Bill Heyhurst in preparation for the match against South Africa, being played at Old Trafford. Norman Yardley is the captain.
context_page_description: Norman Walter Dransfield Yardley was an English cricketer who played for Cambridge University, Yorkshire County Cricket Club and England, as a right-handed batsman and occasional bowler. An amateur, he captained Yorkshire from 1948 to 1955 and England on fourteen occasions between 1947 and 1950, winning four Tests, losing seven and drawing three. Yardley was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1948 and in his obituary in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, he was described as Yorkshire's finest amateur since Stanley Jackson.
  Yardley played schoolboy cricket at St Peter's, York. A highly talented all-round sportsman, he went to St John's College, Cambridge, and won Blues at cricket, squash, rugby fives and field hockey. In the university matches, he scored 90 in his second year, 101 in his third and was captain for his final year. He made his Yorkshire debut in 1936 and played for the county until 1955, when he retired as a player. He made his Test match debut against South Africa in 1939 and after the Second World War was chosen as vice-captain to Wally Hammond on the 1946—47 tour of Australia where he captained England in the fifth Test.
context_section_description: Yardley enjoyed his most successful season with the bat in the 1947 season, scoring 1,906 runs at an average of 44.32 with five centuries; his bowling took eleven wickets. Following Hammond's retirement immediately after the 1946–47 tour, Yardley captained England against South Africa throughout the season. In the first Test, he made his highest Test score. England were unexpectedly made to follow on in the face of a large South African total; when Yardley came to the crease in the second innings, England looked likely to be defeated at 170 for four, still 155 runs behind the tourists. Yardley scored 99, being caught in the slips just before reaching his century, but his batting had helped to save the game and earned praise from Wisden for "batting soundly".He eventually became the first test captain to be dismissed for 99 in a test innings Yardley and Denis Compton added 237, which was a record partnership for the fifth wicket in England and remains, in August 2010, England's best fifth wicket stand against South Africa. Yardley's only other score over fifty in the series came in the drawn fifth Test when he scored 59. However, he scored 41 in just over an hour in helpful conditions for fast bowlers in the third Test and 36 on a difficult pitch in the fourth Test. Yardley scored 273 runs at an average of 39.00 in the series. In contrast to his efforts in Australia, he bowled just six overs in the series without taking a wicket. England won the second, third and fourth Tests to win the series, helped by a negative approach from the tourists. Yardley captained the Gentlemen against the Players for the first time, at Lord's and Scarborough, and captained The Rest against Middlesex, the County Champions. His batting and captaincy in the season earned him selection as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year.
caption: Yardley receiving massage in 1947 before a match against South Africa
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