From joy to despair as dismal Yorkshire are lacerated in Leicester

At Leicester on Friday it was a different story, Yorkshire making a below par 151-7 before Leicestershire cruised home by seven wickets with 35 deliveries remaining.

Year after year it seems that nothing ever changes, the only consistency being the inconsistency of performance.

So interminably long is the Vitality Blast group stage, however, a prison-type sentence of 14 games, there is plenty of time to embark on a good run.

But this was a performance a million miles away from the sort required to lead the club to its first T20 title at the 22nd attempt, a club that has only thrice reached Finals Day in all that time.

Leicestershire finished bottom of the North Group last season - Yorkshire second-bottom - so this was by no means the stiffest test Yorkshire will face.

Whether it was an isolated aberration remains to be seen; Twenty20 has a habit of throwing up nights to forget as well as ones to cherish and remember.

"Yesterday we were very clinical with the ball and the bat and in the field,” reflected Shan Masood, the Yorkshire captain. “Today we were not really clinical.

"We did have the worst of the conditions; they bowled when the pitch was damp, and they bowled well and got every ounce of help out of the conditions, so credit to them for that. They put us under pressure.”

On a pitch that was never easy for run-scoring, it was a man named Hull who did the damage in Leicester when Yorkshire were inserted beneath initially overcast skies.

Josh Hull, a 6ft 7ins left-arm seamer, captured the key wickets of Dawid Malan, Donovan Ferreira and Masood himself to finish with career-best figures of 3-28.

Masood top-scored with 45 - his highest T20 innings for the county in 13 attempts - while Ferreira chipped in with 26 on his second appearance, the pair sharing 50 for fourth wicket in 35 balls.

But the return of Hull, who had bowled Malan in the second over, accounted for both of the set batsmen in the space of five balls, leaving Yorkshire 101-5 in the 14th over and struggling to get up to a competitive total.

Following that early loss of Malan, who struck his first two balls for offside boundaries but did not add to his tally, Yorkshire - unchanged from the previous night - were restricted to 18 runs in the opening four overs, two of them bowled by Hull.

By the end of over No 5, however, they had doubled their score, Scott Currie conceding four offside boundaries (three to Masood, one to Adam Lyth) in addition to two singles.

Lyth never seemed quite set this time, though, having hit a fine unbeaten fifty against Worcestershire, and he was second out in the last over of the powerplay when he cross-batted a return catch to give his former Yorkshire team-mate Ben Mike a wicket with his first ball of the contest.

Yorkshire were 40-2 at the end of the powerplay and they slipped to 45-3 in the eighth when Joe Root lofted Ian Holland straight to long-on.

Ferreira showed his power when cutting England leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed to the boundary and then carting him for six over mid-wicket.

But after the South African top-edged a short ball from Hull to wicketkeeper Ben Cox, Masood followed him back to the hutch when he top-edged another short delivery back to the bowler, his 45 coming from 32 balls and including seven fours, many of them deftly played away on the offside.

Yorkshire lost two more wickets in quick succession when Matty Revis lofted Mike to long-off and Dom Bess was caught around the corner by Hull off Currie.

But Jordan Thompson (25) and Jafer Chohan (15) hoisted them from 116-7 with an unbroken stand of 35 from 17 balls, Thompson launching Mike for successive leg-side sixes and Chohan displaying his power by hammering Hull for a six over long-on.

The Thompson-Chohan alliance at least gave Yorkshire a semblance of hope, but after Rishi Patel took an early liking to the spinners, Thompson conceded more runs in his solitary over than he had managed with the bat.

Sol Budinger whacked him for three sixes and two fours during it as the fourth over of the innings disappeared for a whopping 30 runs, at which point the hosts were 62-0 and the Fat Lady had broken out into full chorus.

Patel fell to the final ball of the powerplay when he lofted Bess to Masood at mid-on, having contributed 30 to a score of 79-1.

The all-round performance of Chohan, the young leg-spinner, was at least a positive for Yorkshire.

He dismissed Budinger one ball after he had brought up a 21-ball half-century when he sliced to Malan at point, and then he had Kimber caught off a top-edged sweep by Moriarty at short fine-leg.

By then, however, the powerful Kimber had creamed 26 from 14 balls with three sixes and it was left to Wiaan Mulder (28 from 17) and Handscomb (16 from 15) to see the hosts home with an unbroken stand of 32.

For Yorkshire, it was back to the drawing board just two matches into the 20-over competition.

From joy to despair in the space of 24 hours, a microcosm of their efforts over the years.