PROFILE

Gerard started the 2011 season, his benefit year, like a house on fire with a top-class 177 in the LV= County Championship win against Worcestershire at New Road, but only played six first-class matches after that ending the season with 355 runs at 44.37 as Jonny Bairstow took the Championship gloves. In six CB40 matches he scored 53 runs and seven t20 matches brought 45 runs. Behind the stumps he claimed 15 catches and 3 stumpings.

Gerard joined Yorkshire ahead of the 2006 season after also playing for Free State, Gauteng and Transvaal. He had played for Northamptonshire between 2002 and 2005. Although born in South Africa Gerard holds a British passport and so is not considered an overseas player in the English first class game.

He captained South Africa Under-17s and in 1999-2000 he struck 185 while playing for the South Africa Academy against the President’s XI in Harare. He also represented Ireland in the 2000 NatWest Trophy competition.

472 Championship runs at 29.50 would have disappointed the Yorkshire keeper in 2010. Starting the summer as second choice behind the stumps to Jonathan Bairstow, Joe Sayers’s illness offered Gerard his opportunity after he had scored impressive runs in the 2nd Team. The summer’s highlight was 103 in the victory over Warwickshire at Headingley Carnegie, the highest of his two first-class centuries in a Yorkshire shirt.

Ever-present in one-day cricket, his 315 CB40 runs at 39.37 were a key factor in Yorkshire’s march to the Semi-Finals and his quick work behind the sticks benefitted the side in all formats.

2009 had been an excellent summer for the wicketkeeper/batsman. He hit 709 runs with six half-centuries with a highest score of 99 in the Roses clash at Headingley Carnegie. 

JAMES BUTTLER
January 2012