Our faith never faltered says Dan Moriarty following first win for Yorkshire CCC
DAN MORIARTY admitted to a sense of relief after Yorkshire gained their first victory of the season and said that spirits among the players had never dropped.
The club finally got off the mark against Worcestershire on Thursday in their opening match in the Vitality Blast.
Yorkshire had gone seven without a win in the County Championship but they hit the ground running in the 20-over format.
“Yes, it was a relief,” said Moriarty, the left-arm spinner, who captured a career-best 4-25 as Yorkshire produced a clinical performance to win by eight wickets.
“It was nice; I feel that we’ve been playing good cricket, and we probably should have won four of those red-ball games, so that’s been frustrating.
“But we’ve turned a new page and it’s a new competition, and it’s almost like a fresh start for us.
“To be honest, spirits haven’t been down - there’s been some frustrating moments, obviously, some close games - but we’ve been saying as a team that we’ve been playing good cricket and it was nice to back that up with a win.”
Yorkshire are straight back in action on Friday night against Leicestershire at Grace Road as they look to win the 20-over tournament for the first time.
Moriarty is hoping that confidence acquired in the Vitality Blast can spill over into the second half of the Championship programme, with second-bottom Yorkshire by no means out of promotion contention on paper given that they are only 24 points (the equivalent of one maximum-points victory) behind Middlesex in the second and final promotion position.
“As I say, I don’t think we’ve played bad red-ball cricket at all,” said Moriarty, with Yorkshire having drawn five and lost two in a weather-affected start to the season.
“We’ve been quite unlucky with our red-ball stuff, and T20 is a new format, its own unique thing, and hopefully we can get some momentum and see where it takes us because T20 is a big momentum game.
“When red-ball cricket comes around again, hopefully we can take some confidence into that because we’ve still got loads of cricket to play, red and white ball.
“We’re working hard - I think we’re doing the right things - and we’ve just got to trust our process and keep trying to move the club in the right direction.”
Moriarty, 25, has had a solid start to the campaign with a couple of four-wicket hauls, the other coming in the Championship against Glamorgan at Headingley.
The former Surrey man was one of three specialist spinners in the side against Worcestershire, with Dom Bess (2-10) and Jafer Chohan (1-25) playing their part.
“Having the spin triplets was nice,” said Moriarty. “It was good to work together and bounce ideas off each other.
“We’ve got three spinners who are very useful in the white-ball cricket so it makes sense to try and utilise that, and I’d like to think that was quite a nice blueprint for us going forward.
“We’ve unfortunately had a few injuries to our seamers, so we’re going a little bit more spin heavy, which is fine, and we’ll just see how it works.
“I think our spinners are good at bowling on good wickets and obviously on turning wickets when it suits, and we’ve got a good enough batting line-up to out-bat a lot of teams which helps us as well.”