Not cricket

Ah, yes, Yorkshire: a county of well-attested attributes, many of them now elevated to caricatures of varying friendliness, but mostly concerned with the virtues of speaking one's mind and a pronounced distaste for anything that might be termed "fancy".

All this achieves its highest statement in the form of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, home of such outstanding practitioners of the outlined native ways as Hutton, Boycott, Close, Illingworth, Trueman and all, where change is regarded as suspiciously as a four before lunch, and where, consequently, there is always a bit of fuss about something.

The latest is a lively one, even by its own exalted standards: two opening ceremonies in disarray, one because it features, on the same set of gates, Sir Leonard Hutton and Asian women spectators; the other because it was to be performed by a cricket-loving but Surrey-born former prime minister.

The first should be a matter of great concern for a county yet to choose a British-born Asian player for its first eleven, despite the large local population. The row over John Major, who has now stepped down, is so predictable as to raise worries about how well Yorkshiremen know their own minds.