The inside story of how Yorkshire became champions

Myself and Myles Hodgson, a former cricket correspondent for the Press Association and now a freelancer who also covers Yorkshire’s fortunes for The Northern Echo through the summer, both reside over the other side of the Pennines.

The wrong side of the Pennines if you believe Yorkshire fans.

But, even so, we both enjoyed every minute of watching and writing about Yorkshire winning the LV= County Championship.

Ok, ok. Maybe not every single minute. Watching Andrew Gale’s side demolish the Red Rose at Emirates Old Trafford in early September as the hosts slipped deep into the relegation mire was pretty tough to take.

Yorkshire deserved this title. They were by far and away the best team in the country. They had the best batting line-up, the best bowling attack, were the best fielding side and are a thoroughly good set of blokes to boot.

So convinced was I that they would win the league, I even had a few quid on them in late March.

This was my third book, with the first being the story of Lancashire’s 2011 Championship win, their first since 1934. Champions…About Bloomin’ Time.

It was very successful, and I knew that if Yorkshire won the league, with the catchment area being bigger, it would probably be equally as successful if not more so.

Myles was my first port of call. We split the duties of covering Yorkshire between us through the season, and he was the ghost writer of the two excellent Andrew Flintoff autobiographies, Being Freddie and Ashes to Ashes.

He is a trusted colleague, an excellent writer and a good mate, and he took little convincing that the idea was a goer should the Championship be sealed.

We first approached the club around May time with nothing more than a “if you win the title, would you be interested in a book?” idea. They were, and we agreed to explore further.

Danny Reuben, the club’s communications manager, was to search out a publisher, we would come up with an outlined plan, and then we would reconvene a little later in the summer.

After a few conversations, we sat down mid to late August at Headingley with Danny and Simon Wilkinson, who had been asked to publish the book on the back of his successful venture with the Tour de France cycling book Two Days in Yorkshire.

Simon is also the man behind SWPix, Yorkshire’s official photographers.

We agreed the only way to do this was to get the players talking extensively and openly about the season, with our mantra being “Make it different”. By that, we meant that we didn’t just want to fill the book with match reports and a few quotes, we wanted behind the scenes stories.

After all, you need only to search back on The Northern Echo website to find match reports.

Even so, we still wanted the book to run chronologically through the season, so we would intertwine quotes and stories into each match.

It took us approximately four full days to interview the players and coaches, sitting down with them for approximately half an hour each. Gale, Gillespie and Moxon ended up being an hour or more each.

We sat down with half the squad before the final game against Somerset at Headingley in late September and the other half during the first week in October. It was an insightful and fun time, probably the most enjoyable part of the whole experience.

Myles and myself were a touch taken aback when on September 22, the day before the Somerset game, we were told that the deadline for all copy was October 13. Then we would have a week to proofread and make any changes before it went to the printers.

The quick turnaround for approximately 50,000 words was needed in order to maximise the Christmas market.

The book, a coffee table style publication, came back from the printers less than a fortnight ago and is on sale.

I am obviously biased, but I think it looks great and is worth every penny of the £30 price. The design is exceptional, the pictures fantastic, but it is not my place to assess the words. Hopefully people think they are just as good.

There are some fascinating tales in there. I loved listening to Jack Leaning talking about his winter (2013/14) in Australia under guidance of Phil Jaques and how that set him up perfectly for his breakthrough summer.

It was laugh a minute stuff listening to Gale tell us stories about how Aaron Finch lived life to the full off the field and also fascinating to hear how the players set about bouncing back from their record-breaking defeat to Middlesex at Lord’s early in the season.

Yorkshire lost despite defending a victory target of 472. Australian Chris Rogers scored a superb double century, with Ryan Sidebottom admitting: “I was one of the bowlers, so I was really hacked off. Coming off the field I was really upset, and the next couple of days I didn’t sleep.

“I was part of the bowling unit that let us down, which I suppose made me all the more determined. I’m sure that was the same for all the lads.”

If you enjoy reading this book as much as we have enjoyed writing it, it will be very much a case of job done.

Yorkshire - A Champion Year can be bought from www.yorkshireccc.com. Published by Well Done Media.