Yorkshire duo Bairstow and Leaning earn national awards

The Yorkshire batsmen have been honoured by The Cricket Writers’ Club for their efforts in county cricket this year. Bairstow, 26, won the County Championship Player of the Year award after starring in Yorkshire’s second successive title triumph. Bairstow scored 1,108 runs at an average of 92.33, with five hundreds and five fifties. Leaning, 21, won the Young Cricketer of the Year accolade after scoring 922 runs at 40.08, with three hundreds and three fifties. The duo received their awards yesterday at a gala dinner in London attended by the world’s leading cricket writers. It is the second successive year that Yorkshire players have scooped both awards. Last year, Adam Lyth was County Championship Player of the Year and Alex Lees Young Cricketer of the Year. Bairstow - who is among four nominees for the Professional Cricketers’ Association Player of the Year award in London tonight, along with Matt Coles, Ashwell Prince and Chris Rushworth - won the Cricket Writers’ Club Young Cricketer of the Year accolade in 2011. Yorkshire players have won four of the last five young player awards, with Joe Root taking the prize in 2012. The County Championship Player of the Year is only in its fourth year, and can be gained by any player of any age provided he is England-qualified. The Young Cricketer of the Year award is a long-standing tradition dating back to 1950, when it was won by Roy Tattersall, the former Lancashire and England off-spinner. Winners of this award have amassed 2,325 Test caps and 1,878 limited-overs international caps between them, with the criteria for this year’s accolade that the player must have been under 23 on May 1. There have been 67 winners of the award in total (the honour was shared in 1986), of which 12 have been Yorkshire players. In addition to Messrs Bairstow, Root, Lees and Leaning, the young player award was won by Fred Trueman (1952), Philip Sharpe (1962), Geoffrey Boycott (1963), Chris Old (1970), Ashley Metcalfe (1986), Richard Blakey (1987), Chris Silverwood (1996) and Adil Rashid (2007).