By Jack Pilkington, Yorkshire County Cricket Club Bursar (i.e. Him as is in charge of brass)

Fifteen years hard work as a fast bowler for Yorkshire, says Matthew Hoggard. Don’t talk to me about hard work, lad. When I were your age I toiled down the pit for 27 hours a day, then ran over to Scarborough in the freezing rain to bowl 45 overs into a gale, then went in as nightwatchman in the pitch black and had to face Wes Hall with nothing but a Garibaldi to protect meself and when I got back in the dressing room Brian Close would beat us within an inch of my life and then and only then was I allowed to start on the double-entry book-keeping and other vital financial matters as kept Yorkshire County Cricket Club as the most prudently run cricket club in the whole world.

Times is tight right now, which is how we like them in Yorkshire, and there’s no money to be wasted on greedy, ideas-above-their-station, clapped out, lost-their-nip oddballs such as some people I won’t mention because Matthew has given tremendous service to the club and we all wish him all the best for the future.

Those of us as are left behind must carry on though, and I can’t help but notice that one other individual has been making some pretty bloody grand and noisy demands of late.

All of you will know our beloved tea-lady Mavis Stokehouse, who has done the teas in the Members’ for 78 years, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year whether there was anyone else in there or not. On days when there were no members in, that woman would eat five pounds of Eccles cake and drink a whole eight-gallon urn of tea just to ensure there were no wastage. Her mother, and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s father – he were a bit of a rum sort, old Bartholomew – wore that famous pink pinny that came to be as much associated with Yorkshire Cricket Club as Fred’s follow-through, Hedley’s high left arm and beating up foreigners after a day on the Western Terracing.

World War II breaking out, her Norman passing, even giving birth to the twins Arkwright and Sir Geoffrey: nothing stopped Mavis from coming in to work for even one day. Now sadly Mavis has passed on and, would you believe it, she wants a day off to go to her own funeral (Barnsley Co-Op Crematorium, this Tuesday, 2pm). The idle so-and-so. I’ve sacked her on the spot and she’ll thank me for it later I know it. RIP Mavis and thanks for all you’ve done for Yorkshire, you greedy cow.

By Alan Tyers