Adam Lyth targets ‘really big score’ as Yorkshire CCC impress at Headingley

The beast with the number 9 on its back had just cut a ball away to the backward-point boundary.

It lifted the animal that is Adam Lyth to his 28th first-class hundred, and there was no mistaking the emotional reaction.

Lyth danced down the pitch and punched the air, as if he had just scored the winning goal for his beloved Arsenal in the FA Cup final.

He embraced Harry Brook, his young batting partner, before taking off his helmet and raising his hands to the crowd in relief as much as anything, his bald head shining beneath the glare of the floodlights.

For it had been a frustrating season until then for the opener, an amalgam of single-figure scores and several dropped slip catches.

Had ‘Lythy’s’ touch deserted him, his je ne sais quois in his 35th year? Don’t be daft.

What is it they say about form being temporary and class permanent? Exactly.

It was just a temporary suspension in cricket’s natural order.

Lyth had to graft and work for his runs, too. On reaching three figures with that shot off Henry Brookes, the promising Warwickshire pace bowler, the left-hander had faced the small matter of 267 balls and batted for 10 minutes short of six hours.

Lyth’s strike-rate of around 40 betokened the effort expended and the discipline displayed. It was an innings that screamed “over my dead body”.

It was also an innings that helped Yorkshire into a commanding position at the halfway stage of the game, the hosts reaching 269-4 in reply to Warwickshire’s 244 before rain shaved off the final 17 overs, sending Andy Fogarty and his groundstaff scurrying for the tarpaulin.

Brook weighed in with 82 – remarkably, his eighth score of 50-plus in nine Championship innings this season (the other was 41) – and shared 157 for the fourth-wicket with Lyth, who had gone on to 118 at stumps, made from 285 balls with 19 fours. “I’ve had a few lean weeks and I just dug deep there and you saw how much it meant to get a hundred,” said Lyth, who dedicated the innings to his wife, Lily, who has not been too well recently but is happily recovering.

“I feel like I’ve played well this year and have been hitting the ball well, but the end column hasn’t been as many as I’d have liked.

“We’ve batted on some pretty solid, good wickets up to now and I haven’t really cashed in when I did manage to get fifties at Northants and Gloucester, so there was a bit more determination, I guess, to get three-figures this time. I’m not finished yet, and hopefully I can go on now and get a really big score.”

Lyth paid tribute to Brook, who was this week named in England’s squad for the first two Tests of the New Zealand series. “Harry came in and played unbelievably well,” said Lyth. “He was free-scoring on a tough wicket to score on. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to a hundred there at the end, but he played fantastically well and that partnership was fantastic for the side.

“I don’t think anyone is hitting the ball as well as he is in the country, so if he does get picked (in the England XI), I’m sure he’d do himself proud.”

Having bowled impressively on day one, when Jordan Thompson and Steve Patterson each took three wickets, and Matty Revis and Tom Loten two apiece, Yorkshire had the platform at 28-0 overnight to go and establish a useful lead.

It was tough going, however, against a Warwickshire attack that was probing and parsimonious, with the former Yorkshire pace bowler Oliver Hannon-Dalby exemplifying the effort with figures, at one stage, of 12-9-9-0.

George Hill was caught behind in the day’s fifth over, following one from Brookes that he tried to waft through the offside, a disappointing end to an otherwise fine innings, and Yorkshire had scrapped hard to reach 65-1 from 30.5 overs when a shower forced a slightly early lunch.

Will Fraine, back in the team and back in the wars when he ducked into a Brookes bouncer early in his innings, also played some eye-catching strokes before he was second out with the score on 82, strangled down the leg-side off Will Rhodes, the Warwickshire captain and another former Yorkshire player.

By now, Lyth was beginning to find his stride and his fluency and after Joe Root was caught behind for eight driving at Brookes, which left Yorkshire 109-3, the hosts took command through the fourth-wicket duo.

Some of Brook’s strokes through mid-wicket, particularly, flew rapier-like across the outfield, while Lyth drove impressively and with natural judgment, the pair complementing each other perfectly.

Brook went to his 50 from 77 balls with eight fours, and a fourth hundred of the campaign seemed more likely than not for the talented 23-year-old, but Hannon-Dalby eventually found the outside edge and Rob Yates did the rest at slip, moving to his left to claim a good catch.

Brook left with the consolation prize of having reclaimed from Kent’s Ben Compton the distinction of having scored the most runs in the Championship First Divison (840 at an average of 140.00). If England leave this guy out of their starting line-up, they really are nuts.