in different representative sides; he was selected in a Test trial, playing for the Rest, and played a second game against the Australians for the Gentlemen of England, although he did not pass fifty in either match. For the Gentlemen against the Players, Yardley scored 88. He did not make the full England side but was twelfth man in two Tests against Australia. His highest innings of the season was 97 for Yorkshire against Gloucestershire, and in all first-class matches, Yardley accumulated 1,217 runs at an average of 31.20 and took 22 wickets at 35.45. Test debut and war service By this stage, Yorkshire regarded Yardley as the heir to Brian Sellers as captain, and the England Test selectors also began to prepare him to assume the England captaincy. At the end of the 1938 season, Yardley was chosen to tour South Africa with MCC as vice-captain to Wally Hammond. He made a good start to the tour, scoring centuries in his first two innings, both surpassing his previous highest score. Wisden noted that he made a good impression on spectators in these early matches. In his fourth match, he captained the MCC in Hammond's absence for the first time. When Len Hutton was injured in a tour match and missed the first Test, Yardey made his debut but scored just seven runs in a total of 422 and did not bat in the second innings. Hutton returned for the second match, and the successes of other batsmen meant that Yardley was not required in the other Tests on the tour. However, he scored a third century when he captained the MCC against Border. Having built up a reputation as one of the best amateur cricketers in England, Yardley played three early season matches for the MCC, but he was selected for neither the Gentlemen nor for England that year. He played his first full season for Yorkshire, scoring centuries against Cambridge, Warwickshire and Sussex; in total, he scored 1,086 runs at an average of 27.84 and took 17 wickets. War brought first-class cricket to an end in 1939, and Yardley joined the first battalion of the Green Howards, along with his Yorkshire team-mate Hedley Verity. After training in Omagh, Northern Ireland, where he played several cricket matches with Verity, he served in India, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Sicily, Italy and Iraq. In January 1944, he was wounded in Italy, rejoining