LV County Championship

MARTYN MOXON has called on Yorkshire's opening batsmen to reverse one of the most extraordinary statistics of this or any other cricket season.

Going into today's crunch County Championship match against Sussex at Scarborough, Yorkshire's average 10th-wicket partnership is higher than their average first-wicket partnership.

Whereas Yorkshire's last wicket averages 21.25 in the Championship, their first wicket averages just 16.71.

Moxon, one of the greatest openers in Yorkshire's history, is anxious to see that anomaly rectified during the final three games of the season as his eighth-placed team look to climb out of the relegation zone.

"Perhaps we should reverse the batting order," quipped Yorkshire's director of professional cricket, whose team narrowly avoided defeat against Kent last week courtesy of a stubborn 10th-wicket stand between Matthew Hoggard and Deon Kruis.

"I don't think Deon would be too happy if we did that but, in all seriousness, it's obviously an area of concern and something we need to try to put right between now and the end of the season.

"The first-wicket has been a problem all year and we've only had one opening stand over 50.

"We've tried a few combinations, but it's something that will hopefully sort itself out and come right for us during the last three games."

Yorkshire have used six openers in this year's Championship – the present pairing of former England captain Michael Vaughan and Andrew Gale, along with Joe Sayers, Chris Taylor, Adam Lyth and Jacques Rudolph.

There is no shortage of quality in that list, and yet Yorkshire's solitary half-century opening stand was the 82 compiled by Gale and Taylor against Surrey at Headingley Carnegie.

The next highest first-wicket partnership was the 45 recorded by the same pair against Hampshire at the Rose Bowl; 15 of Yorkshire's 21 opening stands have failed to reach 20.

Yorkshire's highest 10th-wicket partnership is greater than their highest first-wicket partnership – Adil Rashid and Deon Kruis adding an unbroken 87, also in the game against Surrey at Headingley.

Moxon said Yorkshire planned to stick with the Vaughan/Gale combination between now and the end of the season – an alliance that has so far featured only in last week's game against Kent at Scarborough.

"There are no plans to change the opening combination and both Vaughany and Galey are well capable of putting on some big scores between now and the end of the summer," added Moxon.

"Hopefully, Vaughany will slip into some form in this match and start to produce the scores we know he is capable of producing, while it was only a couple of games ago that Galey got a hundred at Old Trafford going in first.

"It's not exactly something we're incapable of turning around, but it's an area we know we need to address."

Curiously, given a partnership statistic that is as unflattering as it is surprising, Yorkshire had accrued the most batting points (40) of any team in the First Division going into the current round of Championship fixtures.

It has not been their inability to post sizeable first innings scores that has been their downfall, but their lack of second innings runs.

"It has tended to be the second innings of matches that has caused us problems," said Moxon.

"We just haven't batted well enough in the second innings and that's something we also need to put right.

"The last match against Kent was a case in point. We got
450-odd in our first innings and then got less than 200 in our second innings; at one stage we were 130-8.

"If we'd batted as well as we can bat we would have won that game. We only finished 20-odd short as it was, so it was frustrating."