Lancashire v Yorkshire – Old Trafford, 10^th June

Yorkshire won by 2 wickets

[Scorecard]

Six spinners. Top score 34. Old school cricket.

Lancashire batting woeful. Yorkshire little better, until Rafiq’s calm nerves Dilscoop victory.

Yorkshire v Worcs – Headingley, 9^th June

Yorkshire won by 2 runs

[Scorecard]

No sixes for Yorkshire. Four from Andrew, but Ryan keeps it tight; Rashid, Pyrah, take the wickets.

Yorkshire win? *faints*

Notts v Yorkshire – Trent Bridge, 5^th June

Nottinghamshire won by 53 runs

[Scorecard]

Voges’ precision, Patel and Read’s power hitting, set daunting target.

Pitch flat, Yorkshire batting flatter.

Make final’s day? No chance!

Yorkshire v Warwickshire – Headingley, 3^rd June

Warwickshire won by 5 wickets

(13 balls remaining)

[Scorecard]

95/2 at halfway slumps to 161/8. Well shy of a defendable total. Yup, that’ll be Yorkshire’s season in a nutshell…

And so Yorkshire’s God awful road trip comes to an end. Fifteen days that have included a Roses thrashing at Liverpool, yet another humiliation at Taunton and a narrow escape from an innings defeat on the south coast. Not quite the worst fortnight in the clubs long history, but far from being it’s best.

There was some consolation at least from the final day at Hove, with the team showing resolve and determination to bat out ninety odd overs and save a match that had looked all but lost just twenty-four hours before. That’s great, heartening even, but can we please stop getting ourselves into such hopeless looking situations in the first place? Because taken overall, this was another desperately poor performance from a squad with far more ability than they’re showing at present.

Joe Root b Parnell 70

Whether our team selection for this match was part of the problem or merely a distraction is debatable. But there were certainly a couple of interesting choices made – and by interesting, I mean for many supporters they’ll be completely baffling.

I mentioned in my last match report that given his record at the ground, and the current form of Adil Rashid, David Wainwright should be the first spinner picked to play at Hove, and that if he didn’t get a chance here, he should start looking for another club. There’s been nothing during the past four days to change my mind about that.

I’m not saying the nine wicket, ninety-nine run performance I saw him put in during the same fixture a couple of years ago would have been replicated, but given Adil’s just got carted for one of the worst bowling returns in the county’s history, it’s hard to see how Wainwright wouldn’t have been an improvement.

Lyth’s omission for the returning Sayers is perhaps more understandable. The reasons given by Gale were that Adam keeps making starts before getting out to loose strokes – something we’ve all witnessed this season – and that despite numerous discussions, no improvement was being seen. It was made to sound like a ‘kick up the backside’ demotion; which is fair enough. But how you justify dropping Lyth when Mags has been in far worse form is less clear. Lyth at least looks one innings away from making his season click. McGrath’s fluency seems further on the horizon, although forty odd on in the second innings here may have gone some way to rectifying that.

Even so, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that Wainwright and Lyth were incredibly unlucky to have been omitted, and, as it turned out, Rashid unlucky to have played.

Of course, Adil wasn’t the only bowler to suffer during Sussex’s mammoth first innings 548/4 declared. Collectively it’s one of our worst performances in the field for some time. But hard as it is to gauge just how much of a hangover Yorkshire took into this game from Taunton, having conceded the thick end of 800 runs for just four wickets in the space of few days, confidence amongst the bowlers can hardly be sky high.

Which begs the question why our two most expensive bowlers, Shahzad and Rashid, were made to bowl so many overs. Adil in particular was left on whilst he was being given some fearful stick. Last year I praised the way Gale let Adil bowl a long spell at Canterbury to work his way through some poor early season form; but this felt more like a process that would knock down confidence rather than build it up. Heaven knows where this leaves us with a bowler who should have been our trump card in the coming 2020. Heaven knows where this leaves us with an attack that now looks even more of a worry than our batting.

Andrew Gale b Panesar 26

Oh yes, our batting. The underperformance continues, with the senior players being the main culprits. Once again they failed in the first innings. Once again it was the youngsters and lower order that bailed us out. Almost exactly half the runs we scored in this match came from Root, Bairstow and Ballance; 20, 21 and 21 respectively. With the half century from Steve Patterson in the first innings showing what should have been possible in reply to Sussex if we could cut out these mini-collapses we keep having. I could go on, but frankly I’m boring myself, and probably you as well, by describing the same failings over and over again.

The final day batting performance does show there are fighting qualities to Yorkshire’s squad, but the break for 2020 season couldn’t have come sooner. As at the moment the frailties of our batting are matched only by the lack of confidence shown by our attack.

We’ve got just over two weeks and half a dozen T20 games to regroup and prepare for the next championship match at the Riverside. Given Durham’s improving form, perhaps not the ideal fixture to get our season back on the rails.

Result: Sussex (10 points) drew with Yorkshire (5 points)

My Man of the Match: Murray Goodwin

[Scorecard]

Si’thee later,

Len

Steve Patterson, career best

(Match Photos by kind permission: Dave Morton. Click on image for full size)

Bloody Taunton. That ground looms large over Yorkshire’s recent past.

It’s not all bad memories. I’ve written before about how it was the rousing victory of 2008, by a team largely stripped of its capped players, which laid the blueprint for today’s home-grown youth oriented squad.

But since then it’s been a litany of disaster: Somerset making a mockery of our bowling during the record run-chase of 2009, last season’s ‘what the f#%k were you thinking when you declared again’ brainstorm, and now “Trescothick’s match”. Because with 189 from 257 balls in the first innings and 151 not out from 131 in the second, that’s probably what the game will be remembered as.

Personally I think it’s overly simplistic to say he was the difference between the sides – there are more complex problems to Yorkshire’s summer than the lack of a Trescothick in the batting order – but we’d certainly be heading off for the vital game at Hove with our confidence in better order if it wasn’t for the Somerset captain’s ability to bully away an opposition attack’s effectiveness.

Perhaps in a way Yorkshire do have a Trescothick in their side, or at least someone displaying similar form. Where would we be this season if Jonny Bairstow were suffering a similar dip in effectiveness as Adam Lyth? Instead his career continues to progress in the most pleasing manner; double hundred at Nottingham, eighty odd against Hampshire, 136 and 80 here, and sandwiched somewhere in between, bugger all for the Lions in front of the England selectors. As a Yorkshire fan, it’s hard to find fault with that sequence.

That 136 came as part of a two hour partnership with Gary Ballance on the opening day, but it’s the first three wickets tumbling in the space of six overs and the last six going for just 53 runs that’s the more familiar tale of the summer. It seems the problems we had a couple of years ago where painstakingly built up initiative is thrown away by a disastrous session of play has returned to blight this summer.

The 358 we eventually scored was below par given the conditions, and we were lucky to concede a first innings lead short of three figures when it was Somerset’s turn to bat. There’s again was an innings dominated by one batsman, backed ably by two others, but otherwise a catalogue of underperformance. Somerset may have regained their form since early season and look set to challenge for the title, but they wouldn’t be able to rely on Trescothick like this in every game, certainly not against sides with more confidence and form than Yorkshire. Others will need to pitch in.

Yorkshire’s second innings was another familiar story from this summer, almost but not quite. Four half centuries, three hundred runs, and batting a hundred overs is a decent enough effort, but just half an hour longer would have seen us safe. As it was, a target of 228 from 51 overs was always going to be chased down by Somerset given the pitch, their batting and the ghosts from the previous two years. But even so, to have 228 knocked off without taking a wicket is another dispiriting performance. A terrible result to take into what is now a match of incredible importance at Hove in terms of our division one survival.

OHD beats Trescothick - again

In truth it’s hard to judge our bowling too harshly in this game. A flat pitch and a dominating batsman can undermine the confidence and effectiveness of an attack that’s been battered, traumatised even, on this square in the last two visits. Certainly the bowling figures themselves are misleading; Hannon-Dalby’s looking innocuous when he was arguably our best bowler, Rashid comfortably the leading wicket taker when he bowled poorly.

In fact Adil’s been bowling too short for too long now. So far in his career he’s been an ever present in our championship side, but that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Given his record at Hove, and Adil’s current form, I’d make Wainwright our first pick for Sunday’s game, with Adil getting into the side as second spinner, perhaps as much for his determined second innings fifty in this game.

Frankly if Wainwright doesn’t get a chance at Hove he should be looking for another club.

Result: Somerset won by 10 wickets

My Man of the Match: Marcus Trescothick

[Scorecard]

Si’thee later,

Len

Good Ballance

(Match Photos by kind permission: Dave Morton. click on image for full size)

Can we play Worcestershire in every game?

Seriously. Can we? At least then we’d be in with a decent shout of making the semi-finals of this competition.

Instead we know that one false step will see us register a fourth CB40 defeat that would make qualification from our group virtually impossible, and render the remaining matches a pointless formality. Is that a glass is half full or half empty point-of-view? I’m not sure any more. My enthusiasm is still reeling from the kicking it’s taken over the past month or so. I may well be in full blown grumpy Yorkshireman mode.

Still, we won today, admittedly against an opposition that looks completely shot. But hey, that’s their problem. We can concentrate on further signs that Steve Patterson is returning to the reliable ‘turn to’ bowler that Gale has missed for much of the season. With Rashid’s improvement in this form he’ll have some decent one-day bowling options once Pyrah recovers from his knee injury, even if we’re playing for nothing but pride by that point.

Gale can reflect on another solid performance with the bat too. He’s replaced Rudolph as our leading one-day batsman this year. Not the same volume of runs of course, but scored at a more impressive run rate. But then that reflects a difference in their roles. Rudolph was the anchor of our innings; Gale is more of an explosive tone setter.

Come to think of it, we don’t really have someone playing that anchor role for us this year, which may well be why we’ve lost three CB40 games already.

Just so long as it doesn’t become four, I suppose.

Result: Yorkshire won by 7 wickets

My Man of the Match: Steve Patterson

[Scorecard]

Well, that was dispiriting. Dispiriting, disappointing and disjointed. Typical 2011 championship performance from Yorkshire then.

Mitigating circumstances of course. This was a weakened Yorkshire side. Bresnan, McGrath, Pyrah, Brophy, all missing due to injury. Bairstow and Shahzad due to the England selectors. Some real genius at work with that Bairstow selection for the Lions, given it meant we had to bring Simon Guy out of retirement. Fair enough to pick Bluey in the first place, but sticking by the decision when Brophy became injured suggests only a passing interest in a competition that forms the national side’s talent pool. Well, the championship, the Ireland squad and South African’s U19 development side combined I suppose.

Not that losing half our first team excuses 141 all out. Sure we had two relative newcomers to the batting line-up in Root and Ballance, but our first innings still progressed with the fluency and confidence of a sufferer from brittle bone disease learning how to ice-skate. The same problems that have bedevilled us all season were in evidence again: batsmen whose form is too unpredictable and an overall approach to our innings that reflects concern for batting fragility rather than the match situation itself. It’s not that our batsmen seem completely out of form, more that collectively and individually there is an infuriating inconsistency; leading to collapse and underachievement in the first innings, more dogged rearguard resistance in the second.

Ballance ct Chilton b Keedy 6

First day conditions were tough, but once again we made heavier weather of them than necessary, allowing opposition bowlers to dictate the tempo of our innings. Too often when faced with whether to stick or twist, our batsmen lack the confidence to play their hand decisively. The contrast was stark to a Lancashire team that had won three of its opening four games. By the end of day one they were already 56/1, less than a hundred behind us with nine wickets in hand.

Three days to go and already a match situation where we’d struggle to avoid defeat without the intervention of the weather.

That impression had been reinforced 24 hours later with Lancashire 186 runs ahead on first innings. Their run rate was markedly better than ours but without batsmen risking imprudence on a challengingly slow pitch. But then there’s a difference between patience and uncertainty that was highlighted by the gap in confidence between the two Roses sides batting during this match.

At the moment there’s also a gap, almost a chasm, between Yorkshire’s bowling at full strength and when injuries and England selection hit. As when Bresnan, Shahzad, and yes, let’s not be surprised by this, Pyrah, are absent, the fringe bowlers replacing them just aren’t in the form we need. Steve Patterson is excused from that, as he now seems to be rediscovering the rhythm of last year. It’s an improvement that can’t come too soon, and in fact hadn’t, to stop Lancashire taking a significant first innings lead here.

Patterson bowled well

At least there was more resistance second time round with the bat. Sayers, Gale, Ballance and Rashid all making useful fifties, but as so often this season, none of them going on to play the much longer innings needed to see us to safety.

Despite that, the forty overs lost to bad weather on day three meant that some dogged low-order batting almost got us home. But here again we had another problem exposed. For all Sidebottom’s impressive displays with the bat this summer, he shouldn’t be our number eight. With Guy, who hadn’t played first team cricket for two years, hadn’t played a first-class match for almost four, just above him at seven our tail was far too long. When our batting is so inconsistent we can’t afford to play Sidebottom, Patterson, Ashraf and Hannon-Dalby in the same side. If our other all-rounders are unavailable that should mean we play Wainwright. What price one of his stubborn rearguard innings in this match? Sixteen points for Lancashire’s win in all probability. Instead the couple of wickets Joe Root picked up in this match could see him even further down the pecking order.

A useful two wickets for Joe Root

With the evening of the fourth day drawing in, Lancashire had been set a target of 121 from fifteen overs. A few years ago only a cursorily attempt might have been made to chase that down. But despite the lack of fielding restriction in first-class cricket, 2020 has widened the modern batsman’s impression of what is possible. A run rate in double figures no longer intimidates as it once did. And unless your bowlers are at the top of their game a pinch-hitter can scythe a target like that down to size.

So it was for Lancashire with Maharoof’s 31 from 19 balls taking them to victory.

Anyone remember when we were chasing fourth innings targets down confidently last season? Seems a long time ago now doesn’t it?

Result: Lancashire won by six wickets

My Man of the Match: Gary Keedy

[Scorecard]

Si’thee later,

Len

Simon Guy keeping

(Match Photos, by kind permission: Dave Morton. Click on images for full size)

‘Attacking cricket’, that’s what Andy Gale promised when he was made captain. A nice sentiment and, you’d guess, a fair reflection on his ambition for the club. Trouble is, to play attacking cricket you need a solid base to attack from, which in effect means a more reliable batting unit than Yorkshire have had in the championship thus far. Instead we’re too often trying to stabilise an innings when we should be moving the game forward to our advantage; too often progressing at a pace that reflects concerns in our own batting fragility rather than the match situation.

It doesn’t help when your opening pair contributes just seventeen runs in the game. But then Lyth’s form has been hit and miss all season; Sayers’ more block and nick. But I’d still persevere with them. Lyth is a class act who you feel is just a good knock away from really getting his season going, whilst Sayers has already been dropped, made runs in the seconds, then been recalled. His ability to ‘dig in’ means we need to show more patience before considering going through that loop again.

So with Gale and Brophy also falling cheaply in the first innings it was left to Bairstow to hold the side together again. The ease of his play suggests a man in prime form, full of confidence, perhaps one who’ll fulfil my pre-season hunch that once his maiden hundred came, a flood of runs would follow. Although for that to happen he needs to stop getting out in the eighties.

Despite that flaw, he’s been Yorkshire’s leading run scorer this year, so his selection for the England Lions game against Sri Lanka, at the expense of appearing in next week’s Roses match, is a big loss. The disquiet amongst county members about players being pulled from championship fixtures to play in these kinds of warm-up game is well documented and I’m certainly one who questions the value of holding Lions matches at such a vital point in the domestic season.

One of the counter arguments made by the selectors is their need to see fringe players compete against a higher quality of opposition. Well, I might have tipped Lancashire for possible relegation this year, something that tells you all you need to know about my ability as a pundit, but I’d make their attack a damn sight more of a challenge for Bairstow than a Sri Lankan side that without Murili and Malinga is woefully short in experience of English conditions.

Bairstow drives

At least Yorkshire can now call on two other players who’ve caught the eye of the England selectors: Bresnan and Shahzad.

Bresnan had a fine match; bowling with skill, if little luck, during the first innings, before picking up three wickets and a tightened calf in the second. His batting on the first day showed real maturity and determination. It reminds you of how his game is misunderstood by many in the general public and press alike, who all too often underestimate his pace with the ball, overestimate it with the bat. More importantly you’re reminded that he’s that rare breed of player who can spend eighteen months being told his value by the England set-up, yet return with the praise having inflated his confidence rather than his ego.

Shahzad had a more mixed game. He also played a responsible innings first time round, although after Bresnan was dismissed on the second morning he allowed himself to get bogged down. If, say, David Wainwright had been batting in the same situation, you’d have expected him to find ways to infuriate the opposition with the kind of quick singles that were all too often missing from our batting in this match.

Ajmal’s bowling was superb in Hampshire’s first innings, wayward in the second. Confirming what we know of his abilities: he can bowl top quality deliveries but is yet to be consistently top quality; he can bowl genuinely quick deliveries but is yet to be consistently quick. What we do have is someone who gives 100% and is making significant strides forward with his game. If he can add the same consistency Bresnan seems to have found, we’ll have two young all-rounders of real quality, all bit it ones more likely to advance the career record of Andy Flower rather than Martyn Moxon.

Fiery first innings spell from Ajmal

In this game Yorkshire’s attack was at full strength; with Bresnan and Shahzad added to Sidebottom, Rashid and a Steve Patterson who started with a wayward opening over before gradually improving during the next four days. But even when our bowling is so impressive we need enough runs on the board to win matches and, especially in games like this that are affected by bad weather, they need to be scored quickly enough to leave you time to take twenty wickets.

That brings us back to the point I was making about the lack of confidence in our batting. The thirteen runs we scored in the opening hour of day two reflected the concern we had about being knocked over quickly that morning, not the quality of the bowling – although Cork did bowl well and deserved both his five wicket haul and the warm applause he received for it. The delayed declaration on the final day reflected the pace we’d scored at after finding ourselves 87/6, rather than the match situation.

These games where we have our first choice attack should be a priority to win. But the problem’s we have with our batting don’t just cause us to lose games, they leave us playing without the confidence to force the pace and manoeuvre ourselves into a winning position in matches where we have the upper hand.

However strong our bowling may be at times this year, until our batting becomes more reliable we’re in for a season of games like this, full of almost’s and what could have been’s.

Result: Yorkshire (9 points) drew with Hampshire (6 points)

My Man of the Match: Dominic Cork

[Scorecard]

Si’thee later,

Len

Shahzad cuts Briggs

(Match Photos, by kind permission: Dave Morton. Click on images for full size)

Take a look at that statement. Drink it in. Roll it around your noggin for a while. If anyone said that in a previous season you’d have done a double take. Not this year. There’ll be plenty of Yorkshire supporters thinking it.

The injury Pyrah picked up batting in this game – either cartilage or ligament damage to his right knee – could well keep him sidelined for some time. But if there’s a silver lining to losing one of our inform players it’s that it coincides with the return of Shahzad and Bresnan, the all-rounders he was in effect deputising for.

So with Yorkshire reverting to the five batsmen/six bowler balance they’ve used in one-day cricket for much of the last few seasons, Pyrah’s injury still left us with as strong a limited overs attack as you’ll find on the county circuit: Shahzad, Sidebottom, Bresnan, Rashid and Wainwright. Little wonder that Kent struggled when they had to chase an imposing target of 255.

Much of that target was down to a near run-a-ball century from Andy Gale. Exactly the kind of innings Rudolph was reeling out last season when we won ten of our first eleven group matches. We’ve not made that kind of start this year, with defeat in the first two games leaving little room for error if we’re to qualify for the semi-finals again.

This of course is another consequence of having sixteen 20/20 group games. They take up so much of the domestic season there’s no time left in the schedule for the CB40 to have quarter-finals. Instead only the top team from each of the three groups, plus the best placed second team, go straight through to the semis.  A crazy situation that leaves it almost impossible to progress in the tournament, with most teams left with no real incentive after only a handful of matches. That’s not just a complaint based on our indifferent start this year. In 2010 we won nine out of the first ten group games, but with only two to go still didn’t know if we’d qualified.

We managed it of course, but the consistency we showed then was built round the 861 runs, four centuries and five fifties scored by Jacques Rudolph. Perhaps even more than in the championship, this is where Yorkshire’s remaining batting line-up need to follow Andy Gale’s lead and learn how to bat long into the innings; long enough to build the foundation for totals that win matches like this.

Result: Yorkshire won by 93 runs

My Man of the Match: Andy Gale

[Scorecard]

Spare a thought for Joe Root. He’s had quite a week of it. Started out by wondering if he’d hold on to his championship place after Joe Sayers and Gary Ballance racked up runs against Durham University. Then learnt that Mags’ sciatic back pain was problem enough to leave room for both Joes in the Yorkshire first team. By end of play on Wednesday he was eighty-nine not out, being compared to Boycott by Derek Pringle and seemingly on course for his maiden first-class hundred. Twenty-four hours later he’d fallen five short of that mark and had his efforts completely over-shadowed by a stunning double century from Bluey v2.0.

But you know what; he’ll take that week. We all should. He’ll be in Yorkshire’s ranks for a long time on this evidence.

Joe Root Batting

Bairstow might not be though. You get the feeling these are the years we should cherish. These the runs and performances he’ll gift us before a higher calling takes him away. To England duty I mean, I don’t think he’s any ambitions for the priesthood.

It’s been a long time coming that Bairstow century. Fifty-nine attempts to make it into three figures. That wait has looked a ridiculous anomaly at times over the last couple of years. Even more so after the almost effortless way he converted it into a double. Who can tell whether by the end of his career we’ll still be scratching our heads over how long it took, or, like the forty-two innings wait Steve Waugh had for his first Test match century, will it be largely forgotten?

Bairstow reaches his maiden 100...

...and from there past 200

If Bairstow’s breakthrough was a relief then so was much of Yorkshire’s innings. Runs throughout the top order, the resilience to fight back from losing four quick wickets to post over five hundred and more fluency being shown by Joe Sayers on his recall than in the first game at Worcester. All positive signs of improvement, all be it on a fairly benign surface.

There’ll be concern with Lyth’s continued failure to push on to big scores, a criticism that goes for the younger batsmen in general. The sheer weight of runs we’ve lost with Rudolph’s departure only tells half the story; it’s his ability to convert starts into the cornerstone innings that set up a match which also needs to be replaced. Beyond Gale and Sayers, the conversion rate of fifties into hundreds by the Yorkshire batsmen isn’t good enough. The frustration displayed by Lyth after getting out for 57 and 52 in this game shows that fault is recognised.

We also need to increase our scoring rate from an even pace. Although, after our recent batting collapses, for now it’s a case of learning to walk before we can run. Still, it’s frustrating that after dominating the first two and a half days of the game, it was our opponents who came away with more points.

Brophy out

It was the 114 run ninth wicket partnership in Notts first innings that robbed us of the opportunity to enforce the follow on and effectively ended any chance of a positive result in the match. But as I’ve pointed out before, lower order partnerships holding you up isn’t a problem exclusive to Yorkshire, a fact underlined by our ninth wicket pair putting on 150 the previous day.

But what’s also a problem is the rate Adams and Phillips scored at – 114 off 98 balls – quick enough to ensure maximum batting bonus points, something Yorkshire can only dream of at present. In fact that lack of economy from our bowling has been a concern all season – one at least as pressing as our batting frailties. We’ve seen too many boundary balls this season. Too much width. Too many dropped short.

Pyrah finds the edge

The lack of an in form Steve Patterson who can keep an end tight has been badly missed. With Shahzad likely to take a game or two to get back to his best rhythm we might need to turn back to the left-arm spin of David Wainwright.

When frustrating lower order partnerships develop it’s often the drying up of runs that induce an error. We need two bowlers who can strangle a partnership, something Wainwright and Pyrah did to the Hales/Voges combination at Headingley last month. In retrospect dropping Wainwright after that match may have been an error that cost us a chance to win this one.

Result: Nottinghamshire (10 points) drew with Yorkshire (9 points)

My Man of the Match: Jonny Bairstow

[Scorecard]

Si’thee later,

Len

Trent Bridge

(Match Photos, by kind permission: Dave Morton. Click on images for full size)

I see…

Not that anyone should be surprised by this result. The season doesn’t start until Yorkshire has embarrassed itself on national television, and this year we don’t even have Jacques Rudolph to score a few consolation runs and lighten the mood by killing a pigeon.

Bad result all round this for Andy Gale. Lost the match, got out when he looked set for a century, and the TV cameras picked out his bald spot while he was walking off.

His mood won’t have been improved by the same old faults coming back to trip us up, either.

The difference in spin tells half the story of the game. Our lot going for 16-0-123-2, theirs for 20-0-100-4. But hasn’t that often been the case? Yorkshire’s spinners dropping short often enough to make you wonder if the indoor nets are only 21 yards long. Derbyshire’s occasional twirlers being treated with all the reverence of Pippa Middleton’s arse (and by that I mean admired, rather than given the spanking it deserves).

How the hell is a side coached by Craig White so timid against spin? At least there was a positive sign in the way Joe Root approached his task. Yes he was trapped lbw playing the reverse sweep, and yes that was the start of the batting decline, but I hope he’s encouraged to keep playing the shot. We need batsmen with the innovation, skill, and bottle to take the game to opposition slow bowlers. We need batsmen you see Pippa Middleton’s arse and think, “I’ll give that a crafty tickle round the corner”.

Not that Yorkshire’s failings against spin completely explain the collapse that followed Root’s dismissal. Neither, as I’ve said before, do the suggestions of inexperience. They may be a young side, but I’d bet they’ve got as much, if not more, match experience as anyone on the circuit.

Similarly there’ve been plenty of complaints about Yorkshire not replacing Jacques Rudolph – although as far as I can see, no offers to help out with our £20m debt or Ryan Sidebottom’s wages – and yes, the loss of Rudolph is a blow, a vital part of last year’s batting. But if some were underestimating how much he’d be missed this year, his absence is being now being overstated by others. Saying our batting frailty is primarily down to missing Rudolph abdicates responsibility from those still at the club. Sayers, Lyth, Gale, Bairstow, Brophy, McGrath, Root are better players than eighty-six all out; better than nine wickets for sixty-eight. But they need to start showing the form that proves they are.

So come on Yorkshire, stop forcing me to take the piss out of you. Stand up for yourselves. Win some matches. Then I can get on with what I really want to do: taking the piss out of everyone else.

Result: Derbyshire won by 52 runs

My man of the match: Are you kidding? Oh go on then, Gale.

[Scorecard]

Si’thee later,

Len