Replacements no substitute for hard work as Yorkshire face defeat

This allows “like-for-like” substitutes to bat and bowl in County Championship games if players are ill, injured or experience “significant life events”.

We can only speculate what those might be.

“Missus about to give birth to your latest sprog? See you next week...”

“Mother-in-law been kidnapped again? Take all the time you need...”

“Accidentally left the oven on at home? Look, you’d better go and sort it...”

“Forgot to buy your copy of The Yorkshire Post on your way into the ground? Look, don’t take the mickey, son, this is serious...”

Some are in favour of the rule, praising its flexibility, while others feel it offers scope for gamesmanship. Some problems, of course, are clearly unavoidable, but whatever one’s view, it’s an interesting twist.

First it was Jonny Bairstow, the Yorkshire captain, who had to be subbed out after suffering a small fracture in his right thumb during the opening game against Glamorgan last week, to be replaced by batsman Will Luxton.

Then, on the second day of this match against Hampshire, Jhye Richardson, the club’s new Australian quick, was unable to continue due to what was described as “sickness and diarrhoea", to be replaced by fellow overseas recruit Logan van Beek.

Then, before play got under way on day three, pace bowler Jack White was ruled out with the same problem that had laid low Richardson, with 23-year-old Ben Cliff coming into the side.

So far, Anthony McGrath has thrown on more substitutes than Pep Guardiola. Funny old game…

The upshot - after all the upheaval and another day of Hampshire dominance - was that Yorkshire head into the final day on 65-5 in their second innings, pursuing a notional 426 to win.

They might need to sub in Hutton, Boycott, Lehmann, you name it to get out of this one and/or hope for further help from the weather, which has been changeable throughout.

As in the first innings, it was Darren Lehmann’s son, Jake, who played some of the most eye-catching shots from a Hampshire point of view, following his first day 76 with an innings of 92 after the visitors began day three on 93-2, a lead of 167.

Lehmann lashed 12 fours and pulled a van Beek full toss for six before the same man had him caught at deep backward square-leg to end a fifth-wicket stand of 172 in 30.1 overs with Ben Brown, his captain.

Brown contributed the top score of 103 not out from 109 balls with nine fours and four sixes before declaring at 351-5 to leave Yorkshire 29 overs to negotiate before stumps. Brown thrice hit Dom Bess, Yorkshire’s stand-in captain, for six into the leg-side, with the latter stroke raising his 28th first-class hundred.

He also hit a leg-side six off van Beek, who stuck to his task well to collect four wickets and have a hand in the other dismissal - quite literally, indeed.

For after removing nightwatchman Sonny Baker early in the piece, who fell to a good catch by Bess running in from mid-wicket to take a leading edge, van Beek got a left hand to the ball in his follow-through to divert a straight-driven full toss by Lehmann on to the stumps at the non-striker’s end, which ran out Tom Prest.

It was cruel luck on Prest, who took his 31 at the start of the day to 53, a fine 62-ball innings that contained seven fours.

As if to show what he had been trying to do first time, Lehmann followed up by driving van Beek’s next ball, a half volley, to the mid-on boundary wide of the bowler, a shot of pure timing, power and perhaps pent-up frustration.

It was a stop-start day in between the action, rain blowing in after 40 minutes and then mocking the players when it returned just as the play was about to restart. Twenty-five overs were lost overall, the temperature chilly, the clouds always loitering.

Adam Lyth had twice held Yorkshire’s batting together in the three innings so far this season, top-scoring with 97 in the second dig in Glamorgan and then 76 in the first innings here, but the veteran cannot be expected to do it every time.

He was a casualty to the final ball of the opening over of the hosts’ second innings, edging Kyle Abbott low down to Ben Mayes at second slip.

It was 4-2 in Abbott’s third over when, as with Fin Bean in the first innings, Sam Whiteman lost his off stump when shouldering arms to the South African. It is difficult for left-handers when Abbott shapes the ball back so skilfully, and he has generally been on top form here.

Bean and James Wharton added 47 in 17 overs before the latter was lbw to Eddie Jack, then Abbott returned to bowl Matty Revis and trap substitute Cliff lbw.