Throughout Yorkshire's history, the committee had not been known for its visionary approach. They just assumed that because Yorkshire had been fantastic in the past, and the county was full of kids wanting to play cricket, everything would be okay.
I was not a political animal; I could not toady up to the committee men, pour drinks down their necks at the bar, and make them feel important. I was too focused on the cricket.
My mind became so frazzled by the end of the 1974 season that I decided the thing to do was give up playing for England and concentrate on Yorkshire. I felt the only way to succeed was to captain and play every match for Yorkshire.
I always loved the Yorkshire members and was passionate about playing for the county, but the people who were running the club made it at times unbearable for me. The rulers had a history of doing what they wanted and sacking players seemingly on a whim.
I usually tried to stay in the net for 45 minutes, half an hour longer than most batsmen would stick at the county nets. There was a reason for this so-called gluttony of practice: it was a conscious effort to make myself concentrate for long periods of time in circumstances as close to the real thing as I could make them.
