Barry Wood: from Yorkshire to Shaw, via England

WHO was the first player to score two Roses hundreds in the same season against his own county?

Certainly one for Wisden enthusiasts, closet statisticians and Wikipedia addicts.

The wider sporting community should take note too, though — the answer points to an era when talented young professional cricketers had to slog and scrap their way into the game.

Barry Wood’s hand was forced when migrating across the Pennines in 1966, a point that the self-effacing Wood recalls with candid pragmatism.

“When I broke into the Yorkshire squad in 1964 they had a Championship-winning side with 10 internationals — I couldn’t expect to waltz in to the firsts. The problem was that Yorkshire seconds were amateurs. I asked for a retainer, but they were reluctant to give me one. I had to look elsewhere.”

To listen to Wood at length doesn’t so much conjure images of picture postcard villages and Tetley’s Bitter, but the convivial familiarity of Test Match Special’s finest.

“I settled into a great team in Lancashire. The local lads were great — they used to jest, saying I was the second-best thing coming out of Yorkshire,” said Wood.

In my infinite naivety I asked him what was the best: “The road lad, the road,” he replied.

Wood insists he holds no grudge with Yorkshire, but admits the Roses centuries are two of his fondest cricketing memories.

Having lived in Altrincham since retiring at Bowden Cricket Club in 1992, Wood says he considers himself an adopted Lancastrian. His early years at Lancashire saw the club in transition after the retirement Brian Statham in 1968 and the arrival of Jack Bond, a man whom Wood recalls with reverence.

He said: “Jack was a very profound captain and a very important part of our game. We were a very good fielding team — and as we proved, this was a key element of the one-day game.”

Wood’s consistency for Lancashire between 1970 and 1972 resulted in an England debut in the fifth Test against Australia at the Oval in August, 1972.

England lost which meant a tied series, but Wood enjoyed an excellent debut, hitting a second innings 90 against an attack featuring Dennis Lillee.

That brings us to the question of the best bowler Wood faced: “Take your pick!,” he replied. “It was an era of stupendous pace-men. It’s hard to single out an outstanding candidate from among Lillee, Jeff Thompson, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall.

“If pushed I would have to go with Marshall. He moved the ball both ways and had incredible stamina. He was as quick in his 30th over as in his first. He was an ox of a man!”

Wood’s England career was stop-start, a series of recalls and drops, with Geoffrey Boycott, Brian Luckhurst and then Mike Brearley preferred as openers, but he is not at all bitter.

“I had a belting time and don’t like to focus on the negative,” he said.

“Those other openers were tremendous batsmen so I’d rather focus on what I achieved, not what I didn’t.”

His cricketing days may be 25 years behind him and though conceding not being heavily involved in the sport today, Wood is still relevant to Lancashire cricket.

Without a piece of one-day silverware since 1998 and yet to break their Twenty20 title duck despite numerous close calls, Lancashire could do much worse than to draw upon the fielding brilliance of Bond’s one-day kings.

Nobody better typified this than the plucky and diminutive figure of Barry Wood diving in the deep.