Rising prospect Kohler-Cadmore delighted to sign new Yorkshire deal
LAST HURRAH: Rob Burrow holds aloft a Leeds Rhinos flag after winning an eighth Grand Final with the only club he served.
YORKSHIRE have identified Tom Kohler-Cadmore as a player they can build a successful team around after giving the England Lions star a three-year contract extension.
The 25-year-old batsman has signed a deal that will keep him at Emerald Headingley until at least the end of the 2023 season.
It comes four days after he was chosen as Yorkshire’s sole representative for the forthcoming Lions tour to Australia.
“Tom is one of the players who we want to build our team around going forward,” said Yorkshire’s director of cricket, Martyn Moxon.
“To have him here until at least October, 2023 is great news.
“Tom’s ability to play in all forms of the game is invaluable. He’s also an excellent fielder; he was fantastic fielding at slip in the Championship last season, and he’s also had a taste of captaining the T20 side.
“His all-round attributes make him so important to us.
“If we are going to be successful again, Tom’s the calibre of player that we need to have.”
Kohler-Cadmore is part of a 17-man Lions white-ball squad that will play three games against a Cricket Australia XI and two against a New South Wales XI in early February.
He said that staying at Yorkshire was a no-brainer.
“When the club asked me how long (duration of contract I wanted), I said, ‘The longer the better.’ I love playing here.
“How the team is going forward is exciting, and that’s why I signed a long deal because everything at the club seems to be going in the right direction.
“It’s nice to see progression with the lads, and I think we’ve got some good years to come.
“Last season, the side finished fifth in the Championship and T20, and sixth in the One-Day Cup.
“It isn’t what you look for, but we could have won the Championship with three games left.
“In the previous couple of years, we’ve finished fourth but could easily have been relegated with three games left.
“Last season, I felt we were unlucky where we finished, whereas the other two years I felt we were lucky.”
TOM KOHLER-CADMORE:
Kohler-Cadmore’s commitment follows a raft of signings by Yorkshire led by the capture of England batsman Dawid Malan on a four-year deal.
South African left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj has rejoined for the first two Championship games – and will soon be followed by another overseas spinner for the rest of the season – and West Indies’ batsman/wicketkeeper Nicholas Pooran has signed for T20.
There is the sense of a strong squad starting to build as it did in the early part of the decade, reaching glorious fulfilment in the Championship-winning seasons of 2014 and 2015.
Yorkshire are by no means the finished article, or as collectively strong as they were back then, but players such as KohlerCadmore offer hope that more good times are not far away.
Not least as players such as Kohler-Cadmore have their feet planted firmly on the ground. Although he was the club’s leading run-scorer last summer in all formats, there is an air of a man only quietly satisfied with his efforts and anxious to improve.
“I look back on last season and would like to have been a bit more consistent in the redball with a couple more matchwinning scores in there,” he said.
“I was quite happy with my level of consistency in getting starts, but I didn’t go on as much as I’d have liked. Hopefully, next year I can keep the consistent starts but go on more.
“When you’re playing, you always want more runs. Even if you have a year where you’ve got the most runs in the country you’d still want more.
“With the white-ball stuff, it’s about making sure I win games with the bat or in the field and try to contribute as much as I can.”