AS Geoffrey Boycott prepares to take on the Yorkshire cricket establishment once more a new book examines the biggest clash between them, with Craven its most dramatic battleground.

On Easter Saturday the former opener will find out if he has persuaded members to ignore the club’s advice and elect him to the board.

It will bring back memories of the grassroots revolution of 1984 which overthrew Yorkshire’s committee, voted Boycott onto it and reinstated him as a player after his controversial sacking the previous autumn.

The highlight was the legendary Fred Trueman’s election defeat, beaten by Keighley printer Peter Fretwell as Craven’s committee representative.

As Boycott tells The War of the White Roses, Fretwell was typical of the ordinary supporters who formed Members 84 in protest at the star player’s treatment. He defeated Trueman, Boycott’s most high-profile and vocal opponent, by 128 votes to 65.

“I didn’t even know Fretwell was a member but he got on the committee in place of Fred,” Boycott reveals in an interview for the book. “I got to know him then and I asked him why did he go up against Fred Trueman, a huge figure in Yorkshire?

“He said he went to see me play and he thought the committee were wrong.

“At the time Fred was saying if he got voted in he would vote to sack me again. Fretwell said, ‘I said to my wife I thought it was wrong so she said I should put my name down against it. I was amazed when I got two thirds of the vote!’

“There were many people who admired Fred but to say that showed he didn’t give a toss about the members. He could never grasp that he was acting for the members.

“My opponents on the committee couldn’t grasp that they didn’t have a divine right to tell the members what to do.”

Thirty-two years later Boycott is again claiming to be a champion of the members, and is critical of the financial mismanagement he believes is behind Yorkshire’s £20m-plus debt.

Fretwell’s shock win in March 1984 saw him serve alongside Boycott on the county’s public relations sub-committee. He was re-elected in 12 months later, but resigned in December, frustrated committee meetings had been reduced to “personal abuse.”

Fretwell was instrumental in setting up the White Rose members’ magazine.

Trueman was so bitter about his defeat he threw out all his old Yorkshire kit, and would only return to Headingley when working for BBC Radio’s Test Match Special.

The episode is just one of those outlined in The War of the White Roses, which looks at the disputes which tore the county apart between 1968 and 1986 – most of which centred around Boycott.

When the Yorkshire side was broken up after a hat-trick of County Championship titles in 1968, the captaincy passed to Boycott.

His performances proved he was the county’s last remaining world-class player, but he was an unpopular figure in the dressing room and an unsuccessful leader on the field. If anything, though, his influence increased after being sacked as captain in 1978.

That decision prompted the formation of the Reform Group – forerunners to Members 84 – and although unable to get him reinstated they proved highly influential, culminating in the 1984 “revolution”.

Supporters such as Fretwell were uncomfortable with Boycott’s “dual role” as committee member and player, and after three years of wrangling it was finally ended in 1986, when he was again not offered a new contract. This time there was no uprising.

In addition to Boycott, author Stuart Rayner interviewed a number of other former players, including Chris Old, Richard Hutton, Kevin Sharp and Yorkshire’s current director of cricket Martyn Moxon. He also spoke to committeemen, supporters and opposition players.

• The War of the White Roses: Yorkshire Cricket’s Civil War 1968-1986 by Stuart Rayner is published by Pitch Publishing.