If there’s one subject that got Yorkshire gums flapping in fury whilst queuing up at Brett’s this year, it’s been Jacques Rudolph’s position in the batting order. We’ve had the full range of invective on display from “He’d score more runs in the middle-order” through “we’re wasting our best stroke-maker” and on to “Moxon and Mags are the only people in Yorkshire who can’t see what a disaster this is”. Honestly, to witness the anger it invoked in some of the membership you’d think they’d just found Russell Brand’s phone number on their grand-daughters mobile.

Well, I’m calling bullshit on it.

Let’s put things in perspective, the opening partnership was a nightmare last season – with the now familiar stat that the last wicket pairing had a better season long average being truly deserving of the label “disaster”. Over the winter our coaches had the job of putting that right, the fact that only the opening pairs of Somerset and Hampshire outscored Sayers and Rudolph suggest the hard choices they made have paid off.

Of course a compromise has been made. At this stage of his career you feel that Jacques is more at ease in the middle order, but if, as some have suggested, he’s not suited to open the innings, then he’s been rather foolish to spend more than a third of his career doing exactly that. In reality we’ve had several Jacques Rudolph sized holes in the Yorkshire line-up for some time, but only one Jacques Rudolph to fill them.

So would he have scored more runs in the middle order? Probably not, as one advantage of having him open is that you maximise the number of innings he plays. He may have had a higher average lower down, but a batsman’s average doesn’t help his team, the number of runs he scores does.

The fact he had five ducks this season is another stick used to beat the coaches with, but here we have an example of looking back at previous seasons through (white) rose-tinted glasses. Look a little deeper and you’ll see that Rudolph was out in single figures seven times this season, the same as 2007, and one more than 2008 when he played fewer innings. His vulnerability early in an innings is nothing new, and no worse than previous years. A more enlightening statistic is that last year he scored 103 runs @ 13.50 in the second innings of matches, whilst this year that increased to 575 @ 57.50. Add in the fact he top-scored in 9 out of 27 innings and you see much more consistentcy than he’s been given credit for.

Some supporters may not like where Rudolph is batting, and admittedly it may not be ideal, but he’s still scoring heavily in all competitions. Instead of worrying about his place in the order we should be concentrating on the, still to be announced, new rules on Kolpaks. As wherever he bats, Rudolph is the one player we can’t afford to lose.

Championship – 16 matches, 1334 runs @ 51.30

Friends Provident – 8 matches, 264 runs @ 33.00

Twenty/20 Cup – 10 matches, 166 runs @ 20.75

Pro40 – 7 matches, 421 runs @ 70.16

(Jacques Rudolph photo: By kind permission of Dave Morton)