Christmas Trivia

Here are a few trivia questions which I've circulated to friends (including, as you might infer from the questions, several with Yorkshire connections) . I'll publish answers after 3 January.

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!

Questions

1, This week England collapsed losing 5/13 and almost a Test match. It hasn't been the worst collapse in first class cricket so far this month. Who lost 5/9 and also the match?

2. Also this month which team won a match by scoring 1/445 in the fourth innings?

3. Which Yorkshire wicketkeeper once scored a half century when opening the batting for England?

4 Which Yorkshire wicketkeeper's autobiography was called Taking It From Behind ?

5. Which Yorkshire wicketkeeper also played professional soccer for a Football League club?

6. Who was the wicketkeeper who captained England and played for Yorkshire.

7. Did the Wigan goalkeeper who was in goal during his side's recent 9- 1 drubbing by Spurs hold his place in the team afterwards?

8. Who played in goal for 4 Football League clubs and bowled for 4 counties?

9. Who, in the last decade, has opened the batting and bowling in the same Test?

10. Which country has never fielded a Test player named Johnson: (a) England (b) India (c) New Zealand (d) Zimbabwe?

A safe pair of hands? 64 y o Yorkshire wicketkeeper with all his fingers and thumbs broken

From Metro.co.uk.

I admire his fortitude and determination to keep playing at what may seem to be an advanced age (but not to me who is just approaching it).

David Morrison, you crazy finger man

David Morrison is anything but a safe pair of hands. In 45 years of wicket keeping, the amateur league cricketer has broken every finger and both his thumbs.

Reluctant to seek medical attention for fear of losing his place in the team, he would simply apply a bag of frozen peas and carry on playing.

It was not until three years ago that doctors got a chance to examine his hands – his thumb was so badly injured it needed to be pinned in place.

They were so amazed that they took scores of photographs and asked to use them in lectures.

'If you don't get it just right behind the stumps you can take quite a nasty knock to your hands,' admitted the 64-year-old father of two who plays for Barton Cricket Club in North Yorkshire.

'My fingers still work, more or less. I can bend them all from the first knuckle, although I do have a physio who manipulates the joints to soften the tissue.'

Mr Morrison, a taxi driver from Scruton, suffered most of his injuries in his younger days wearing flimsy chamois leather gloves.

He said he had considered retiring from wicket keeping in 2002 but could not bring himself to walk away.

Last weekend he picked up both a Darlington and District League championship medal and a black eye when a 16-year old leg spinner caught him unawares.

'I've told him that his eyes have gone, his fingers have all been broken and he's far too old for wicket keeping, but he just won't listen,' said his long-suffering partner, Valerie Tait, a 62-year-old former landlady.

'He's back playing for Barton as if nothing's happened – then he creeps home on Saturday night with yet another black eye.'

Martin Fairey, secretary of Barton Cricket Club, said: 'He's a brilliant keeper and trying to shake his hand is an experience.'

Lancashire supporter adrift in Adelaide

Today, as I was trying to navigate my way around or through the barriers which have been erected in the east parklands for the petrol heads' big days out next weekend (aka the Clipsal 500), I asked a passerby by for directions. He was on even less familiar ground than me as he turned out to be a Lancastrian (or Mancunian), which I'd have deduced before he spoke had I looked closely at his attire. He was wearing an Old Trafford cap - with a cricket pavilion - and he somewhat sheepishly admitted to being a Lancashire cricket follower, though his bright red shorts suggested that he might have had more than a passing interest in Manchester United F C.