PROFILE

Yorkshire’s left-handed opener Adam Lyth was believed to have been a whisker away from an England Test call-up ahead of the Ashes series in Australia in 2010/11 following a stunning summer in Yorkshire colours.

And it would be no surprise to see the fluent Whitby-born player rekindle his hopes of international honours in the forthcoming years. He only needs to look down the other end of the pitch at his opening partner Joe Root to see just what can be achieved.

Lyth, who has played for England under 19s, is similar to team-mate Jonny Bairstow in that he could have been a footballer because he had trials at Manchester City as a teenager. His brother Ashley played non-league football for Scarborough.

Sticking with Scarborough, it is at the cricket club on North Marine Road where Lyth grew up and still plays when county commitments allow.

His near miss with England came as a result of a stunning 2010, in which he became the first man to score 1,000 first-class runs in the season. He finished the campaign with 1,509 runs from 16 matches, including three tons. Lyth toured Australia and the West Indies with the Lions that winter.

His summer of 2011 did not hit the same heights, and he even found himself out of the Yorkshire team, but he returned to form the following summer as he carried his bat against Leicestershire at Grace Road with an unbeaten 248.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

2003 - Captained Yorkshire under 15s in a drawn Roses match at St Annes and scored an unbeaten 102 off 148 balls from number three. Adil Rashid opened the batting.

2004 - Debuted for Yorkshire seconds at the age of 16 whilst still playing in the under 17s County Championship.

2006 - After scoring a hundred for England under 19s in a Test match against India at Canterbury in July - current India Test star Virat Kohli did likewise - he made his first-team bow for Yorkshire in a 40-over match against Hampshire in September, scoring 23 from number five. 

2007 - Another Yorkshire debut followed, this time in first-class cricket against Loughborough University at Headingley, in which he batted three and made an encouraging 31 under Andrew Gale’s interim leadership. It was a sign of things to come.

2008 - Maiden Championship ton came against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in July - a second-innings 132 - as part of a season’s haul of 645 runs, securing him the club’s Young Player of the Year award.

2009 - Smashed a brilliant 109 not out off 106 balls, including eight fours and four sixes, in a 40-over defeat against Sussex at Scarborough, but his appearances in Championship cricket were limited to four.

2010 - Made a stunning start to the Championship campaign, mirroring that of his team as they ran eventual champions Notts close. His first eleven matches yielded scores of 6, 67, 0, 90, 8, 84, 85, 47, 142, 93, 133, 98, 0, 100, 29, 84, 1, 75 and 42. Narrowly missed out on the magical 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May, but was capped in August on his home ground at Scarborough and called up by the England Performance Programme in October.

2011 - Struggled to replicate his form of the previous summer, just creeping past 550 Championship runs.

2012 - Turned heads with a special unbeaten 248 in a Championship draw against Leicestershire at Grace Road as 751 runs for the season were accrued. That knock meant he had posted the highest score by any Yorkshire batsman to carry their bat through an innings, while it was also the county’s highest individual score for six years. When congratulated by his team-mates afterwards with a ‘well done Lythy, you’ve just carried your bat’, he responded with ‘I know I’ve carried my bat, I’ve done it for about a day and a half!’