Doug Padgett died on January 20, 2024, aged 89. A Yorkshire stalwart, he played two Test matches, and was remembered in the 2025 edition of the Wisden Almanack.
PADGETT, DOUGLAS ERNEST VERNON, who died on January 20, aged 89, spent his entire 50-year working life with Yorkshire. He made his debut at Taunton in June 1951, in a team that included Fred Trueman and Bob Appleyard, and played his final match at Bournemouth 20 years later, alongside Geoffrey Boycott and David Bairstow. With 487 first-class appearances, he is 12th on Yorkshire’s all-time list – as he is among their leading run-scorers, with 20,306. After retiring, he became Second XI captain and the county coach, developing the talents of 18 future England players, including Michael Vaughan.
Doug Padgett was a mainstay of the team that won seven County Championships in ten seasons, plus the Gillette Cup in 1965 and 1969. At Hove in 1959, he played a significant role in launching that golden era. On the last afternoon of Yorkshire’s final Championship game of the season, they were set 215 in 105 minutes for a victory that would put them beyond the chasing pack. Padgett and Bryan Stott added 141 for the third wicket in an hour to steer them to the brink of their first outright title since 1946. In The Daily Telegraph, EW Swanton described their strokeplay as “unforgettable”. He added: “It was not in any sense blind hitting. Their driving especially was magnificent, and the number of false strokes remarkably small.” The innings capped Padgett’s most successful season – 2,181 runs at 41, including a career-best 161 not out against Oxford University in the Parks. It earned him a Test call-up against South Africa the following summer but, after 51 runs in four innings, he was discarded for good.
Padgett grew up in the Bradford suburb of Idle, and at 13 was playing for the local First XI in the tough school of the Bradford League. On his debut, the club chairman offered him a shilling per run. The purity of his batting soon drew comparisons with Len Hutton. “From his earliest days, his technique was almost flawless,” said the journalist David Warner. He was 16 years 321 days when he made his first-class debut, then the youngest player in Yorkshire’s history. “His 25 not out in difficult circumstances was as good as many a 50,” said The Yorkshire Post.
But, after two years’ national service, he did not become established in the team until 1956, when he hit 1,000 runs for the first time. His returns were poor in the next two summers, before he blossomed under the captaincy of Ronnie Burnet. He contributed regularly to Yorkshire’s success, passing 1,000 runs 11 times in 12 seasons. Yet some felt his talent should have brought even greater rewards. “Padge would point out that he rarely had a settled place in the batting order,” said Warner. “That was because, under Brian Close, Yorkshire were always playing aggressively in search of victories, and the line-up would be shuffled around. The players accepted this as the price of going for wins.” After his disappointing Test performances, he was selected for an MCC tour of New Zealand in 1960/61. He finished as the second-highest run-scorer, but played in only one of the unofficial Tests. Padgett thought Willie Watson, who captained in the two he missed, was still harbouring a grudge after he had turned down a chance to join him at Leicestershire.
Off the field, Padgett was a quiet but popular figure in a combustible dressing-room. In the evenings, he enjoyed a pint and a chat about cricket. His enthusiasm for the game sometimes continued after he fell asleep: room-mate Ray Illingworth said he would sit up and shout “Howzat?” in the middle of the night. Padgett looked back on the era with affection. “We used to have a go at one another in the dressing-room, but woe betide an outsider if he tried to criticise any member of the side,” he told the writer Andrew Collomosse. They were certainly not playing for financial reward. “Before the 1965 Gillette final against Surrey, we learned that they were on £100 a man to win,” he recalled. “So Brian Close went to see the chairman Brian Sellers. ‘Win the bugger first, and we’ll see,’ Sellers told him. I think we ended up with a tenner.”
At the end of the 1971 season, Padgett’s first-team contract was not renewed; he became Second XI captain, and succeeded the formidable Arthur Mitchell as coach. Boycott, by then Yorkshire’s captain, asked the committee to reverse the decision, believing a young team would benefit from his runs and experience. The plea fell on deaf ears. Instead, Padgett turned his attention to developing a production line of talent that included Bill Athey, Paul Jarvis, Graham Stevenson, Martyn Moxon, David Byas and Darren Gough. He coached two father-and-son pairings: Arnie and Ryan Sidebottom, and Richard and Michael Lumb. “I suppose the lads saw me as something of a father figure, and I liked to be there if they needed a quiet chat.”
His greatest discovery came one day in the late 1980s. Sipping tea on the dressing-room balcony during a break in play at Sheffield’s Abbeydale Park, he was admiring the technique of a teenage boy on the outfield, and went down to find out his name. Padgett was dismayed to discover he had been born in Manchester but, when Yorkshire dropped their ban on players born outside the county, he made sure the boy – Michael Vaughan – joined the club’s youth system. After Padgett’s death, Vaughan tweeted: “RIP Doug... I will be for ever grateful for the knowledge you passed on to me. Such a great character, who adored Yorkshire cricket.”
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