Harry Duke and Dom Leech guide Yorkshire CCC to thrilling win at York

Leech ran down the pitch and punched the air as a 3,000 crowd generally went wild.

Yorkshire had won by one wicket, and Clifton Park had a finish to remember.

Not least young Harry Duke, who might not have hit the winning runs, but whose contribution, more than anyone, saw Yorkshire home.

The opening batsman/wicketkeeper scored 93 not out as Yorkshire chased 242 with nine balls left, Duke and Leech adding 33 for the last wicket when the home side’s hopes appeared to have gone.

Instead, Yorkshire’s second successive victory in the 50-over competition, after their win over Essex at Chelmsford on Sunday, lifted them into the third and final qualifying place in Group A with three matches left.

Hampshire, in second, are the visitors to Clifton Park on Thursday before Yorkshire face leaders Leicestershire at Grace Road on Sunday, and then seventh-placed Middlesex at Radlett on Tuesday.

Whisper it quietly, but their quest for a first one-day trophy for 21 years is very much alive.

Several hurdles remain to be negotiated – this is a young team due to absences caused by the Hundred – but this win can only inspire great confidence.

Such an outcome felt unlikely when Yorkshire slipped to 210-9 in the 39th over, still 32 shy of their target, and with last man Leech having no great batting pedigree of which to speak; this was his maiden one-day innings on just his third appearance.

But how well the 22-year-old rose to the challenge, trusted by Duke, 21, to not only hold up an end but also to contribute from it, Leech scoring an unbeaten 18 with three boundaries in a nerveless display – outwardly at least.

Duke, who deserved a hundred, and already has two to his credit in the List A game, was his usual productive self all around the ground, contributing seven fours and a six in a 132-ball innings.

The six - as straight as an arrow - came off Dan Moriarty, the left-arm spinner, who was on loan at Yorkshire earlier this season.

Maddeningly for Moriarty, he could not quite provide the clinching wicket for which the script had looked set, finishing with 1-47 from his 10 overs.

In fact, it was his team-mate, Cameron Steel, who took the spin bowling honours, the leggie capturing 3-49 to inspire a middle-to-lower order collapse.

Yorkshire were apparently coasting just prior to that, advancing to a menacing 141-3 in the 25th over with Duke and Will Fraine well set together.

But Fraine’s departure to a stumping off Patel (Josh Blake took the gloves after Ben Foakes twisted an ankle while batting), followed by the loss of James Wharton pulling to mid-on, gave Steel something to work with. Ben Mike, Matty Revis and Dom Bess fell to his wiles to leave Yorkshire 197-8, which became 210-9 when Moriarty bowled Ben Coad aiming in the general direction of Leeds.

At that stage, it seemed that Ben Geddes’s innings might win the day for Surrey, the 22-year-old top-scoring with a one-day best 92 after Yorkshire inserted on a competitive pitch.

Geddes, who came in at 59-4 in the 16th over after Leech had reduced Surrey to 0-2 early in the piece, faced 90 balls and hit 10 fours and three sixes, one of which - a pull off Revis - sailed over the high brick wall near the scoreboard and into someone’s back garden, hopefully not taking out an old dear tending to her delphiniums in the process.

Conor McKerr, with whom Geddes added 94 in a key seventh-wicket stand, chipped in with 32 and Dom Sibley with 30.

Pace bowler Mike - the only change to the Yorkshire side from Chelmsford, replacing off-spinner Jack Shutt - took the final four wickets to finish with a one-day best 4-40, Yorkshire just pegging the visitors back sufficiently at the end when a score perhaps pushing 275 had looked on the cards.

Instead, their 241 all-out, with 13 balls of the innings left unused, was decent but gettable.

It still required Yorkshire to bat well, and Fraine and George Hill supplied useful contributions, as did Bess towards the finish with an innings that contained a six over long-on that injured a spectator.

But the main substance was provided by Duke, the glue that held the whole thing together, with Duke and Leech showing courage at the death.

"You don’t get many days like that on a cricket field,” said Duke afterwards, “and to do it with one of my best mates at the other end – I’ve played cricket with ‘Leechy’ since I was 13 – was unbelievable.”

Two young cricketers at the start of their careers, providing the perfect finish to the perfect Yorkshire evening.