The 36 executive boxes in the new East Stand at Headingley have now been named after illustrious York-shire cricketers past and present following a poll among the club's 9,000 members.

With a 70-strong list to choose from it was inevitable that some of the county's greatest players down the years would miss out.

Even so, anyone viewing the plaques on each of the doors may be taken aback that such famous players as Wilfred Rhodes, George Hirst, Hedley Verity and Bill Bowes are not included.

Rhodes and Hirst are Yorkshire's all-time leading wicket-takers with 3,598 and 2,484 victims respectively while Hirst is fifth among the top run-scorers with 32,057 and Rhodes sixth with 31,075.

The magic weaved by Hedley Verity's left-arm spin brought him 1,558 wickets to place him sixth in the bowling lists and that gentle giant Bill Bowes is only three places behind him with 1,351 dismissals.

There is, however, a very good reason why the names of this famous quartet do not adorn any of the boxes - they were not put on the original list.

And the reason for that, according to former Yorkshire and England off-spinner Geoff Cope, who was responsible for drawing up the list, is that they have already given their names to other rooms at Headingley.

"We have the Verity-Bowes suite in the room above the club offices and in the main pavilion we have the Hirst-Rhodes function room," said Cope.

"We wanted to honour as many of the club's great players as possible and there was no point in duplicating any of them."

Cope drew up his list mainly from batsmen who had scored 10,000 first class runs for the county and bowlers who had taken 1,000 wickets, but some exceptions were made.

"Sachin Tendulkar was included because he was our first overseas player and a very popular choice and Darren Lehmann is there because of his great contribution to Yorkshire cricket.

"Obviously, Michael Vaughan and Matthew Hoggard have not yet reached the targets because they are still young players and Darren Gough has proved himself to be one of the biggest cricketing stars of the modern era."

One player whose name is missing from the boxes but has an undeniable claim to be there is that of Cope himself, whose off-spin earned him 630 wickets at 24.80 runs apiece - figures that would be even better if he had not been prematurely hounded out of the game because of what some at Lord's considered to be a suspect bowling action.

Unlike many ex-players, Cope is continuing to serve the club on the committee and does a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work. This will increase still further next year if, as expected, he takes over as cricket chairman from Bob Platt, who intends to step down at the annual meeting in March.

Updated: 10:49 Saturday, August 03, 2002