Frustration for Yorkshire CCC as they are held to a draw in Scarborough stalemate
YOU could not so much hear a pin drop as seagulls cry as Yorkshire strove for wickets at Scarborough.
You can always tell when the hosts are struggling for breakthroughs here as the home crowd tends to go deathly quiet, with the gulls providing the only soundtrack.
So it was on the final day as Yorkshire were forced to settle for a draw. They had started out needing nine wickets and Warwickshire, 44-1 overnight, an improbable target of 453, but the match ended with the visitors 333-8 when hands were shaken at 6.13pm, with one ball of the contest remaining.
Sam Hain, the 30-year-old right-hander, one of county cricket’s most consistent performers, led the resistance with an innings of 69 from 218 balls with six fours and a six.
He was well-supported by Ed Barnard, his captain, who followed his top score in the first innings of 83 not out with 58 from 109 deliveries with nine fours.
George Hill took 3-32 from 14 overs, while there were two wickets each for Hassan Ali and Dom Bess.
Ultimately, though, batting conditions eased and Warwickshire – to their credit – fought extremely hard, proving once again that victories are far from easy to come by in the First Division of the County Championship.
In watery sunshine at first before the clouds dispersed, and with the breeze having dropped from the previous three days, Yorkshire’s hopes were raised when Hill struck twice after 20 minutes.
First, Alex Davies drove back a powerful return catch, Hill thrusting out a right hand to claim a sharp reflex effort from the opening ball of the day’s sixth over.
Dan Mousley then played a peculiar hand, the tall left-hander playing and missing at his first ball from Hill, whom he then hit for three successive boundaries (through point, mid-off and mid-on) before aiming a loose drive at the next and final delivery of the over, which flew to Adam Lyth at second slip. Quite what Mousley was doing was anyone’s guess.
Ethan Bamber, the nightwatchman, hung around for the first 75 minutes of the session before he was fourth out with the total on 93.
The seamer tried to hook a ball from Hassan that flew off the top edge down to long-leg in front of the pavilion, where Jack White took a magnificent, back-pedalling catch inches from the rope.
There was almost a repeat of the Hill caught-and-bowled when Ben Cliff could not quite cling on in his follow-through when Beau Webster had 13 and the score was 123.
The difference, though, was that it was a leading edge as the Australian looked to turn to leg, so Cliff did not quite have the same clear sight of the ball and was perhaps taken by surprise.
Hain and Webster frustrated Yorkshire for 55 minutes after the lunch break. The fifth-wicket pair defended solidly but kept the scoreboard shifting, and it had climbed to 180 by the time Webster was out one short of his fifty, bowled off an inside-edge as he went back to a ball from Bess that he tried to push into the covers.
That broke an obdurate stand of 87 inside 28 overs and brought to life another sparse crowd, one numbering 1,211 in perhaps the most pleasant watching conditions of the fixture.
Hain went to his half-century from 142 balls but so nearly fell to the final ball before tea as Cliff tore in from the Trafalgar Square end. The elegant Hain tucked it off his hip just wide of a diving Hill at leg slip, Warwickshire going into the interval at 237-5 with 35 overs of the contest left.
Now it was a case of second new ball or bust for Yorkshire, who took it as soon as it became available four overs after tea. There were plenty of close shaves and some interesting appeals, which might have been upheld had the umpires been bribed.
Still Yorkshire kept plugging away, however, and they finally got Hain with 18.4 overs of the game remaining.
Pushing forward to Bess, he was brilliantly caught low down by Lyth at forward short-leg, the fielder peeling away in celebration, chased by his team-mates.
Hain and Barnard’s partnership was worth 86 inside 34 overs, Hain playing nicely all around the ground and chipping a straight six when Bess over-pitched.
Barnard, who reached his fifty from 96 deliveries, was strong off his pads and looked to be positive, allowing Hain to play more of an anchoring role.
When Matty Revis had Barnard caught behind with 13.3 overs left, as Warwickshire fell to 286-7, a Yorkshire victory seemed back on the table.
But Warwickshire bat deep as Zen Malik and Manav Suthar proved as the skies clouded over, sharing 47 before Suthar was caught behind off Hassan from the second ball of the final over.
And as the players left the field having given it their all, there remained only the sound of the seagull cries, the birds scavenging for scraps on the Popular Bank.