‘In a Yorkshire Like Way’: Cricket and the Construction of Regional Identity in Nineteenth-century Yorkshire

This paper examines how by 1900 cricket had come to be seen as an important representation of Yorkshire identity. It places the start of this process in the game's popular pre-modern context, as professional-centred, competitive, commercial cricket dominated its formative development across the region. The way these values led to local rivalries which became focused on the concept of a representative team building Yorkshire's status within the national context of cricket is then explored. Finally these events are set against the formation of the ‘Gentleman Amateur’ controlled county club in 1863, to show how a distinctive concept of county cricket developed in Yorkshire which offers a different perspective on the English county game during its formative decade and beyond.