No job too big for Yorkshire as they salvage one-day tie at Warwickshire

Yorkshire looked doomed when they fell to 33-4 chasing 271 for victory, and then pretty much dead and buried when they lost big-hitting David Willey to slip to 89-5.

But a sixth-wicket stand of 138 between Jonny Tattersall and Tim Bresnan revived their fortunes and ultimately helped them emerge with a tie.

Bresnan hit 89 and Tattersall 79, and although there was disappointment that Yorkshire could not quite finish the job, the more appropriate emotion was pride in that they helped to rescue a seemingly lost cause.

When Tattersall fell to the final ball of the 45th over, bowled round his legs by Warwickshire captain/off-spinner Jeetan Patel, Yorkshire needed 45 from the final five overs.

It was always going to be tricky, with Patel bowling two of them, and when Bresnan fell to the third delivery of the 46th over, well caught by a diving Patel at cover off England’s Chris Woakes, it once again looked as though Warwickshire would win.

Adil Rashid, playing his 200th one-day game, holed out on the long-off boundary in the penultimate over, Patel’s last, as the equation came down to 10 needed from the final over entrusted to teenage quick Henry Brookes.

After Mat Pillans poached a single, Yorkshire captain Steve Patterson clubbed a boundary through mid-wicket before Brookes followed up with a leg-side wide, leaving four needed from the last four balls. Patterson scampered a single, Pillans was caught at mid-off, and the last two deliveries produced byes via singles to the wicketkeeper.

Josh Poysden, playing against the club that he left for Yorkshire last summer, was unable to write the fairytale ending as he failed to make contact with the last delivery, both sides looking out on their feet emotionally at the end.

A share of the spoils felt like the right result, and it halted for Yorkshire an eight-match losing sequence against Warwickshire in one-day cricket dating back to 2005, discounting one abandonment and two no-results.

Not since August 2003, indeed, have they beaten Warwickshire in one-day competition, when a hundred from Stephen Fleming inspired a seven-wicket win in the old National League at Headingley, and they remain a difficult side to see off for as long as Patel, 38, remains at their heart.

Following Willey’s dismissal for 40, following a miscued pull to Patel at mid-on, Tattersall and Bresnan were magnificent in the sunshine.

Both are at opposite ends of the career spectrum – Tattersall 24, Bresnan 34 – and their partnership was a fusion of youthful exuberance on the one hand and canny knowhow on the other.

No one would have begrudged them their maiden one-day hundreds.

After Warwickshire scored 270-8 on being sent into bat, Bresnan played his part with the ball too, taking the first two wickets on a day when he bowled only six overs of a possible 10.

That was more of a tribute to the bowlers that followed, though, with Yorkshire doing a good job collectively of keeping down the runs.

Patterson led the way by conceding only 17 in an opening seven-over burst, Warwickshire failing to find the boundary from the second ball of the ninth over until the fifth ball of the 22nd.

That coincided with Poysden’s introduction, but after the leg-spinner conceded 25 from his first three overs, former Yorkshire batsman Will Rhodes playing him well en route to an eye-catching 43, the leg-spinner recovered to finish with 2-54, fellow wrist-spinner Rashid returning 1-46 from his 10 overs despite a short leg-side boundary to the Hollies Stand.

On a day blessed with glorious weather, one more evocative of August than April, and with just a light breeze rippling the black sightscreen at the Birmingham End, Tim Ambrose top-scored for Warwickshire with 77.

Pillans followed his maiden five-fer in the 213-run hammering of Leicestershire with Yorkshire’s best figures of 3-56, while Tattersall got four dismissals and was tidy behind the stumps.

Although the pitch looked as bare as a new-born baby, promising a veritable feast of runs for the 3,000 crowd, it revealed itself to be slightly slow.

It didn’t look particularly easy to hit through the line, and it was a day when bowlers were always in the game, a day when batsmen never had everything their own way as they often do these days.

For the record, Bresnan faced 88 balls and hit eight fours and two sixes, while Tattersall negotiated 81 deliveries and hit seven fours.

Thanks in no small part to their efforts, Yorkshire head into tomorrow’s Roses match at Headingley still unbeaten in the tournament.

This is not a side inclined to lay down and die.