Anthony McGrath is a dyed-in-the-wool Bradford lad who has climbed from the very first rung of junior cricket with his home club of Bankfoot right up to the giddy heights of captain of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

It is one of the most demanding and often stormy jobs in English cricket but also one of the most prestigious and the 27-year-old has the quiet confidence and the inner firmness to make a big success of it.

His first major task will be to take Yorkshire straight back into Division One of the County Championship after they suffered the humiliation last season of starting out as champions and finishing up bottom of the pile and relegated.

McGrath is Yorkshire's first Bradford-born captain since the fiery David Bairstow took on the job for three seasons from 1984 but whereas Bairstow was colourfully loud and extrovert by nature, McGrath has a much quieter style of playing his cricket.

That does not make him a loner by any means and he has always been a popular member of the dressing room. If there is some kind of prank going on then "Maggs" is bound to be involved somewhere down the line, but he knows that from now on he will have to stop being just one of the boys.

McGrath's appointment as Yorkshire captain - which was made official this afternoon - will receive the warm approval of all Bradford League fans, but nowhere will it be more widely acclaimed than at Bankfoot and East Bierley.

McGrath has been a loyal servant of both clubs down the years and his rise to the top of Yorkshire cricket is a great advert for the continuing strength of Bradford League cricket.

His family is steeped in local cricket and he has received every encouragement from his mum and dad, Terry and Kathleen, as well as on-the-field support from brother Dermot during successful times together at East Bierley.

McGrath's batting ability shone out at an early age and it was obvious there was a star in the making as early as 1992 when, as a 16-year-old at Bankfoot, he won the Bradford League's coveted Gordon Bowers Young Cricketer of the Year Award. Not content with that, he retained the honour in 1993 and held on to it again the following season.

During this time of his golden youth, he topped the Division Two runs chart in 1993 with 1,020 runs in only 19 innings, and three years later he topped four figures again with 1,064 runs in 25 innings for East Bierley. Then, in 2000, he played a memorable Priestley Cup final innings of 115 to help East Bierley beat Hanging Heaton.

His younger years were not solely taken up playing Bradford League cricket, however, and he captained Yorkshire Schools at under-13 level right up to under-16s.

He was skipper of the English Schools under-17 side and went on to make his mark with England under-17s and under-19s as well as with England A.

In the summer of 1995, McGrath was Marcus Trescothick's opening partner in England under-19s' three-match 'Test' series against South Africa under-19s, and both of them flogged big centuries. It seemed then that one day McGrath would go on to open for England with Trescothick but it was McGrath's Yorkshire team-mate Michael Vaughan who won that right after McGrath's batting failed to develop quite so strongly.

McGrath's inevitable Championship debut for Yorkshire came against Glamorgan on May 18, 1995, on his home ground at Bradford Park Avenue, when he opened with Vaughan and was out for a duck in the first innings and made 36 in the second.

But he really announced himself towards the end of that season at the Scarborough Cricket Festival when he made his first appearance in a one-day match and lashed the West Indies for 106.

Knee and groin injuries and occasional patches of poor form have to some extent held back McGrath's career but last season he began to show his true class again and it was his match-winning stand of 103 with Australian Matthew Elliott in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy final which highlighted his captaincy potential.

Elliott took the glory with his 128 not out but he later admitted that it was McGrath who had talked him through the Nervous Nineties and restored his flagging confidence and energy.

Towards the end of last season and during the winter, McGrath has been having nets under the guidance of Yorkshire's new batting coach, Kevin Sharp, and the pair now find themselves the main force in Yorkshire cricket, along with director of cricket Geoff Cope.

All three of them live within a stone's throw of each other in the Bradford area and if Yorkshire manage to restore their pride this season then the local trio will have had much to do with it.