Failure to replace Rudolph proved key factor

Hello Derby, Grace Road and Chelmsford.

Yorkshire have plunged into the County Championship Second Division.

And the inquest can start into a shattering season.

The reality is that Yorkshire got what they deserved.

They did not play well enough to stay in the top flight.

Promising positions were routinely squandered.

Their work was sloppy and fraught with mistakes.

In hindsight, the warning signs were present in their opening match.

Although Yorkshire achieved a nine-wicket victory against Worcestershire at New Road, one of only three wins they managed in the Championship all season, it was a fixture they could so easily have lost.

After dismissing Worcestershire for 286, Yorkshire crashed to 155-7 in reply as the relegation favourites stormed back into the game.

It took a magnificent, unbeaten 177 from Gerard Brophy and a career-best 61 from Ryan Sidebottom to turn the match around, the pair adding 149 for the eighth-wicket as Yorkshire recovered to 368, Worcestershire subsiding in their second innings.

If anyone had said after that match that Worcestershire would finish above Yorkshire in the table, they would have been shoved into a strait-jacket and led to a lunatic asylum.

Indeed, there is no greater measure of what a wretched season Yorkshire endured than the fact that Worcestershire – most people’s favourites for the drop – managed more points than they did.

Not only was the game at New Road a false dawn for Yorkshire in general, but for Adil Rashid in particular.

The diminutive leg-spinner, so brilliant on his day and vital to the side’s hopes of repeating a title challenge, claimed 11 wickets in the match as Worcestershire were bamboozled by his wiles.

But Rashid managed only a further 28 wickets in the next 15 games – a loss of form that permeated the camp like a flu virus.

Adam Lyth and Anthony McGrath, who both scored more than 1,000 Championship runs in 2010, managed only 553 and 485, respectively, this time, which, allied to the absence of Jacques Rudolph for most of the year, left an enormous hole in Yorkshire’s batting.

Although McGrath was hampered by injuries, it was a hole that was entirely foreseeable considering that McGrath is in the twilight of his career and that Lyth was going into the dreaded second season.

Well though young players such as Jonny Bairstow, Gary Ballance and Joe Root batted, it was too much to expect Yorkshire to prosper on the back of their efforts while more experienced cricketers failed to deliver.

The decision to re-sign Rudolph on a short-term contract in July was a measure of how desperate Yorkshire became.

All season they had stated categorically they had no money for an overseas player, only to be forced into an embarrassing U-turn.

Predictably, however, not even Rudolph could save them from the drop.

The South African scored 318 runs in his four Championship appearances at 45.42, hardly the worse statistics in the world but still not enough to stave off the inevitable.

Before the season began, a cricket writer not a million miles from this parish suggested that Rudolph’s departure at the end of last season could well prove the difference between a top-three finish and a bottom-three finish unless another batsman was recruited.

One takes no pleasure whatsoever in being proved right.

It was not only the South African’s runs that Yorkshire missed, however, but his calming influence on the rest of the team.

Instead, batting collapses became de rigueur as Yorkshire paid for some X-rated periods in all forms of cricket.

One of the most dramatic occurred during the third Championship game of the season, against Nottinghamshire at Headingley.

Yorkshire lost by 58 runs after being bowled out for 86, despite having had Nottinghamshire effectively minus 26-6 in their own second innings.

Nottinghamshire’s comeback was of Headingley ’81 proportions and suggested something was not quite right with the Yorkshire side.

Bairstow made an unbeaten 50 out of that 86 and Nottinghamshire felt he was the only batsman who had the confidence to win the game, with a distinct lack of confidence seemingly undermining Yorkshire for much of the summer.

One day after that disturbing debacle, Yorkshire plunged to 27-5 at home to the Netherlands in the CB40 competition and contrived to lose that match.

When Yorkshire then collapsed from 125-1 to 193 all-out against Derbyshire in their next CB40 game, en route to defeat by 52 runs, they were effectively out of that tournament after just two games, and a four-wicket defeat away to the Netherlands in July was another low point.

Yet it could have been so different.

Had Yorkshire beaten Nottinghamshire at Headingley, or had they won their Championship home game against Hampshire when magnificently placed, they would not have been relegated.

In that latter match, Yorkshire reduced Hampshire to 7-4 and then 54-6 in pursuit of 289 to win.

But Hampshire somehow held out for a draw – and Yorkshire talked not for the first or last time of missed opportunities.

Of course, there were some highlights along the way.

In Bairstow, Ballance and Root, Yorkshire possess three highly-gifted young cricketers and plenty of promising home-grown talent.

Andrew Gale had a fine season with the bat in all competitions before a broken arm cruelly ended the captain’s season.

Rich Pyrah came on leaps and bounds, Joe Sayers recovered courageously from a career-threatening illness, while Sidebottom showed there is life in the old dog yet as he finished leading wicket-taker in the Championship with 62 at an impressive average of 22.00.

But do not be fooled.

Promotion next year will not be a formality.

There are some competitive teams in Division Two and Yorkshire are by no means the only county with talented young players.

When Yorkshire last climbed out of the Second Division in 2005, there were three promotion spots available and they sneaked up in third place.

This time there are only two places available – and Yorkshire will have to play a darned sight better next year to stand any chance of filling them.