Record-breaking openers revive Yorkshire spirits for floodlit test

In 13 meetings prior to this game, they had won nine compared with Yorkshire’s three, with one match abandoned.

Not for nothing, of course, are they three-times champions, whereas Yorkshire have yet to even reach a finals day.

But Leicestershire are not the side that they were last summer, when they won the competition against expectations, and Yorkshire took advantage with a 22-run victory that raised hopes that this might finally be their year.

After winning the toss and electing to bat, Yorkshire scored 170-4 from their 20 overs.

Andrew Gale, the captain, led the way with 70 from 42 balls and was well supported by Phil Jaques (48 from 41) and David Miller (30 not out from 20 deliveries).

Leicestershire kept pace with the required rate for four-fifths of their innings, but the loss of regular wickets stymied their charge and prevented them mounting a decisive late surge.

Only Josh Cobb (46 from 28 balls) and Ramnaresh Sarwan (45 from 32) threatened the hosts, with three wickets from Mitchell Starc and two apiece for Ryan Sidebottom, Azeem Rafiq and Rich Pyrah sending Yorkshire into tonight’s floodlit game at Derbyshire with spirits revived.

The importance of this match to both teams was obvious from the outset.

Leicestershire, no longer able to call on Australian all-rounder Andrew McDonald, the leading run-scorer in last year’s competition, nor the retired Paul Nixon or the departed James Taylor, had lost their opening two games in defence of their title.

Yorkshire had also gone down in their opening fixture, by two runs against Durham at Headingley on Friday.

It meant that one team’s winless record – barring a tie or bad weather – was going to give before a 3,000 crowd.

The odds on it being Leicestershire’s increased with every run of Gale and Jaques’s opening partnership.

The pair established a new first-wicket best for Yorkshire in the competition, adding 116 before Jaques fell to the final ball of the 13th over, well caught by Jacques du Toit on the mid-wicket boundary off Robert Taylor.

Their stand eclipsed the 104 made by Gale and Jacques Rudolph against the same opponents at Leicester in 2009, and it left the visitors with a mountain to climb.

However, on a day when spectators basked in pleasant sunshine, a rarity during this rain-soaked summer, Leicestershire hardly helped themselves.

Gale and Jaques played plenty of fine shots, with both striking former Yorkshire pace bowler Matthew Hoggard for six, but Leicestershire’s bowling was generally poor.

Abdul Razzaq, in particular, was extremely disappointing as Yorkshire tucked into some help-yourself stuff.

The visitors struggled to put the ball in the same place twice and were guilty, in the main, of bowling too short.

Yorkshire had reached 90-0 at the halfway stage, at which point we were scouring the record books to remind ourselves of their highest total – 213-7 against Worcestershire at Headingley in 2010.

As it turned out, a becalmed period just after that halfway mark, when just 18 runs arrived in four overs, meant they only got up to their joint 18th-highest score as Leicestershire, improbably, dragged the game back.

It was during that period that Gale was second out, caught on the long-on boundary by Cobb off Hoggard after registering his 14th half-century in Twenty20.

Yorkshire, in fact, went 4.2 overs without scoring a boundary until Jonny Bairstow clubbed White for a straight six from the final delivery of the 17th over.

Bairstow – released by England to play in the game, but unavailable tonight as he rejoins the national one-day squad – struck 17 from 13 balls before he was third out in the penultimate over, caught at long-on by Taylor off White.

Gary Ballance chipped White’s next ball to Cobb, running in from long-on, and the bowler so nearly claimed a hat-trick when his next ball hit Miller’s stumps but did not remove the bails.

Miller supplied some useful tap as 46 arrived off the last five overs.

Leicestershire were in discomfort at 48-2 in the seventh over after Pyrah had Greg Smith caught at mid-off and then threw up an instinctive right hand to catch du Toit off his own bowling.

Cobb and Sarwan stabilised the chase, guiding Leicestershire to 83-2 at the halfway stage, before Cobb was calamitously run-out with the total on 85.

Moin Ashraf fired in a yorker at Sarwan, who squeezed it out only for Bairstow to throw back to the bowler, who was much too quick for the back-tracking Cobb.

Rafiq bowled the ineffective Razzaq and had Matthew Boyce caught behind, but Leicestershire were only three runs adrift at 121-5 after 15 overs.

But the wickets column told as their challenge evaporated, effectively extinguished when Sarwan skied Sidebottom to mid-off on a day when the former England man and his colleagues produced block-hole bowling of the highest order.