PROFILE

A diminutive slow-left-armer who possessed great guile, Arthur Booth had one exceptional season for Yorkshire when at 43 he headed the national averages with 111 wickets at 11.61, helping Yorkshire to the 1946 County Championship. His best returns were 6-21 against Warwickshire and 6-33 against India.

He vied with Hedley Verity and Horace Fisher for a place in the Yorkshire side when the great Wilfred Rhodes finished in 1930. He missed out and not until 1946, at 43, when first-class cricket started again after the war, did he realise his life-time ambition to be Yorkshire's unchallenged No. 1 spinner.

Skipper Brian Sellers, much to the bowler's annoyance, christened him `Grandad'.

When Yorkshire went to Glamorgan for the first game of the 1947 season Booth went down with rheumatic fever and did not play for Yorkshire again. He died in hospital at Rochdale, August 17, 1974. He had lived for many years at Littleborough on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border and had shared a cricket interest between the two counties as a professional in the leagues and later as a coach at the Yorkshire nets and a committee man with Lancashire.