David Byas, English cricketer and umpire
David Byas (born 26 August 1963, Middledale, Kilham, East Riding of Yorkshire, England) is an English first-class cricketer, who played for Yorkshire and latterly Lancashire, in a 17 year first-class career.
Byas grew up as a farm in Yorkshire, having attended school at Scarborough College. He was a left-handed batsman who scored a Century, on the day his son (Ben) was born, and very occasionally bowled right-arm medium pace. He was appointed Yorkshire's captain at the start of the 1996 season, following the resignation of Martyn Moxon. In 2001, he led the county to their first County Championship title win for 33 years, sealing the championship with a catch taken at North Marine Road.
In 1995, Byas was on the verge of an England call-up, having been the first player to reach 1,000 runs in that season, only the return to fitness of Michael Atherton and Graeme Hick, prevented him from doing so. In total he scored 1,913 runs in the whole campaign.
His highest score of 213, was made at his home ground of North Marine Road, being one of only five players to achieve a double-hundred in the first-class game, at this stadium.
Byas started his career in 1978, as a second-team player at Scarborough. However, he ultimately helped the club to the latter two of their five ECB National Club Cricket Championship titles (1981 and 1982) at Lord's. In 1984, he set a record in the now former Yorkshire League, by scoring 1,349 runs for the season, a record which stood for 19 years.
Since retiring, Byas has been a manager and coach at Scarborough, in charge of cricket development at Pocklington School, a senior cricket advisor at Yorkshire, and runs his own cricket school, the 'Byas Academy'.
In November 2021, it came to light that Byas had been named in the witness statement of Azeem Rafiq for the employment tribunal regarding racism he faced at Yorkshire County Cricket Club. It was alleged that Byas regularly used racist language such as the n-word and p-word. Byas has denied these allegations.