Notts CCC v Yorkshire CCC: Visitors stick at it on hard-fought day
THE sense of a season in which everything that could go wrong is going wrong was hardly allayed by the absence of Abdullah Shafique for this game at Trent Bridge.
A delayed visa forced the Pakistan batsman to miss the first of what would have been two appearances in the County Championship to go with four in the T20 Blast. It never rains, and all that.
While Yorkshire hope that the 25-year-old will now make his debut against Essex at York in the Championship on Sunday, here, at least, was a hard-fought day in a season that has thrown up its fair share of challenges.
A combination of a used pitch with not much life in it, the Kookaburra ball and some useful Nottinghamshire batting saw the First Division leaders reach 298-6 at stumps on day one, a competitive if not yet conclusive position.
Yorkshire stuck at it after losing the toss, their energy levels high, their body language good. The first hour, as ever, will be bigger than a big thing with the word “BIG” in capitals on the side of the van.
After the furnace-like heat of recent days, there was a slightly fresher feel to the temperature, helped by a gusting, westerly wind. The pavilion, currently closed off for renovation, was shielded from view by grey plastic sheeting, as though injured horses were being put down behind it.
Beside the pavilion, as the players went through their pre-match rituals, a man could be seen pushing leaflets into spectators’ hands advertising a lunchtime talk in The Rice Bar concerning the 1868 Aboriginal tour of England.
While that was going on, a members’ forum was being held in The Hadlee Hall concerning cricket’s crazy schedule, a problem that perhaps preoccupied those Aborigines, also, given that they played 47 games in the space of six months.
As with the hosts, Yorkshire fielded two specialist spinners, Dan Moriarty returning to accompany Dom Bess. The pair combined in the most significant moment of the morning session, Bess dropping Ben Slater on 11 at cover off Moriarty as the left-hander aimed a free-flowing drive.
When Slater square-drove Moriarty’s next ball to the Fox Road Stand, where the smattering of spectators pretty much each had a block to themselves, the 50 was up after 75 minutes. Slater and Haseeb Hameed had taken the score to 90-0 at lunch, at which point the question was not so much ‘roast chicken or roast beef?’ as ‘Aboriginal talk or members’ forum?’, with the majority, predictably, choosing the latter.
A little lunchtime rain spiced up the surrounds, causing a 15-minute delay to an afternoon session mainly conducted in watery sunshine. Hameed surprisingly fell to the second ball of it – innocuously, in truth, the captain caught behind off an inside edge trying to turn Jack White to leg. Hameed scored 52 from 97 balls with eight fours and thus extended his lead at the top of the First Division’s run-scorer’s list over Adam Lyth - he has 786 to the Yorkshireman’s 728.
If Hameed’s dismissal was somewhat soft, Freddie McCann’s was similarly tame, the left-hander also caught behind as he tried to pull Will O’Rourke, the New Zealand fast bowler, who is making a one-off Championship appearance to go with his Blast commitments. There was no place in the Yorkshire side for Ben Coad, omitted from the 13 along with Harry Duke.
After McCann’s departure, Slater and Joe Clarke added 65 for the third-wicket as the hosts moved into a threatening position. Slater pulled O’Rourke to the boundary to reach his fifty from 29 balls, while Clarke played one or two nice shots off his legs, although he had an early scare when an edge off George Hill seemed to drop agonisingly short of Bess at first slip.
Clarke threw it away just before tea, trying to launch Moriarty over mid-on but picking out one of the tallest fielders around as Matty Revis back-pedelled towards The Hound Road Stand and took an excellent leaping catch in his left hand.
Nottinghamshire were 196-3 at the break, still well-placed but with the nagging feeling, no doubt, that they had been the architects of their own dismissals.
That theme continued after the break. Slater, with a hundred there for the taking, had moved to within four runs of it when he drove Moriarty to Hill at cover, having faced 224 balls and hit 12 to the rope. Slater, who scored 52 and 78 in the win at Headingley when these sides met only last month, trudged off dolefully, like a man emerging from a newsagents who had just been told that The Yorkshire Post had sold out moments before.
Hill trapped a static Jack Haynes on the crease, but Ishan Kishan, an overseas player signed on a two-match deal who has arrived, carried the fight in the closing stages. The Indian reached an unbeaten 44 before bad light claimed the last two overs, Lyndon James perishing to a catch at cover by Fin Bean off Hill.