Yorkshire's evergreen wicketkeeper-batsman Richard Blakey goes on reaching new milestones - and cocking a snook as he does so at those pundits who have been forecasting for some years now that the end is nigh for the 36-year-old Huddersfield-born player.

Pressure is certainly being applied on Blakey by his young pretender behind the stumps, Simon Guy, who was given the gloves for Yorkshire Phoenix's last National League match against Kent Spitfires at Tunbridge Wells.

Blakey retained his place in the side solely as a batsman and although his gutsy knock of 41 was insufficient to end Yorkshire's losing run it was enough for him to be handed a crown which may never be taken away from him.

During the course of his innings, Blakey became his county's highest scoring batsman in national league cricket when he overtook David Byas's aggregate of 5,352 runs, his former captain witnessing the feat from the boundary edge while working as a summariser on the game for local radio.

Few Yorkshire fans would assume that Blakey is equally as successful in this form of cricket as was Byas but the statistics show that he is, despite Blakey more often than not batting lower down the order than the sturdy left-hander.

Blakey has had 208 league innings to make it to 5,385 runs while Byas had three fewer visits to the crease in assembling 5,352.

The only other member of Yorkshire's 5,000 club is Geoff Boycott who had accumulated 5,051 runs by the time he called it a day and his success in single innings cricket will also take some fans by surprise.

Although Boycott trails Blakey and Byas by 300 or so runs he only had 157 innings and there is no doubt that if he had batted another 50 times he would have been far ahead of the other two.

At Tunbridge Wells, Blakey showed he can be just as dextrous in the field as behind the stumps by holding on to two catches, but Guy's presence as wicketkeeper ended a remarkable sequence of matches by Blakey which goes back 11 years.

It was Blakey's 168th consecutive appearance in the competition and the first time during that run that he has not gone into the game as the designated wicketkeeper.

The last time Blakey missed a match was on August 23, 1992, when Yorkshire were taking on Surrey at Scarborough and the reason for his absence was that he was playing for England in their Texaco Trophy one-day international against Pakistan at Lord's - a thriller of a game in which Blakey scored a gallant 25 and Pakistan won by three runs.

Blakey has now taken part in 235 league matches for Yorkshire and with 24-year-old Guy breathing strongly down his neck he may struggle to equal the 279 appearances of his wicketkeeping predecessor, David Bairstow.

Bairstow, of course, was as robust and volatile as his successor is calm and quiet, but Blakey will end up with the more impressive record. So far he has taken 230 catches, the vast majority with the gloves on, and has pulled off 44 stumpings, whereas Bairstow had 234 catches and 23 stumpings.

With the bat, Blakey's 5,385 runs in 208 include three centuries and 27 half-centuries while Bairstow bludgeoned 3,677 runs in 227 innings with 16 half-centuries.

That is not to say, however, that Yorkshire would not welcome another 'Bairstow-type' player into their present side with open arms.

The Bradford-born former captain, who died so tragically five years' ago, would have provided the sort of raw energy which Yorkshire are lacking and he would undoubtedly have been a fearsome opponent in Twenty20 cricket.

Updated: 11:02 Saturday, June 21, 2003