Yorkshire CCC and the Green Howards Regiment are to combine to mark the centenary birthday of legendary cricketer and war hero Hedley Verity.

The great left-arm slow bowler - the only player to take all ten wickets for Yorkshire on two occasions - was born near the county club's Headingley headquarters on May 18, 1905, but was brought up in Rawdon and educated at Yeadon and Guiseley Secondary School.

He went on to capture 1,558 wickets for Yorkshire at a miserly 13.70 runs apiece and 144 wickets for England at 24.37 before the Second World War intervened.

A captain in the Green Howards' Regiment, Verity died on July 31, 1943, after being mortally wounded in action a few days earlier while leading his company in Sicily.

On May 25, Yorkshire will begin a four-day championship match against Essex at Headingley and on the first morning a memorial plaque to Verity will be unveiled in the long room by his son, Douglas Verity, who now lives in Wales.

The ceremony will be attended by Yorkshire officials and former players as well as senior representatives of the Army and the Green Howards' Regiment, and during the lunch interval, the Corps of Drums will play on the ground.

The long room will also house a Verity exhibition which will include items from Yorkshire's archives and the Imperial War Museum.

Assisting in organising the event are Yorkshire vice-presidents, Keith Moss and Sidney Fielding, who is a close friend of the Verity family.

"The idea came about when Lieut Col David O'Kelly of the Green Howards wrote to me with a request that as 2005 was the last year in which the Green Howards could claim to be the oldest unamalgamated English Line Regiment, it would be appropriate to mark the occasion with a double celebration of Verity's centenary," said Fielden.

Two other famous Yorkshire and England cricketers, Herbert Sutcliffe and Norman Yardley, were also in the Green Howards Regiment.

Both of Verity's ten-wicket hauls were achieved at Headingley, the first against Warwickshire in 1931 when he claimed ten for 36 and then the following year against Nottinghamshire when his ten wickets for ten runs were the best-ever recorded by a Yorkshire bowler.

Verity grabbed seven or more wickets in an innings for Yorkshire on 48 occasions, a figure exceeded only by Wilfred Rhodes (60), and only five bowlers in the club's history have taken more career wickets than Verity.