Steve Patterson frustrated as Yorkshire facing Headingley stalemate

Yorkshire needed to dismiss Essex before they had reached 241 in reply to their own first innings score of 390 to make them bat again, but Australian pace bowler Peter Siddle was the visitors’ hero with an undefeated 39 – including a straight six off Patterson that avoided the follow-on with nine wickets down.

Essex closed on 252-9, 138 behind, leaving Yorkshire a difficult task to try to force a result in a match in which they have not been assisted by the loss of more than 70 overs to rain and bad light.

“It’s frustrating because we had them nine-down and couldn’t quite get the last one in time,” said Patterson, whose dismissal of Jamie Porter to a slip catch had left Essex 18 runs short of safety on 223-9.

“But the lads toiled hard on a really good batting surface and worked really hard from Essex being 190-3 at one point.

“To get them nine-down from there and to have a chance of making them follow-on was an outstanding effort.

“Prior to that, Essex played well on a really good surface.”

On the prospect of trying to set something up, Patterson said: “We’ll have a chat and see what we feel is the best way forward.

“I think we’ve got to have one eye on the fact that we batted 125 overs to get bowled out and they’ve batted 100 overs and we still haven’t bowled them out yet, so how long would we realistically need (to bowl them out again)?

“If we think we can win, we’ll certainly try. We’ll just have to assess what the best method is.”

Yorkshire team-mate David Willey added: “It’s frustrating, but despite that I think it was a brilliant effort by all the bowlers today. It’s a good pitch, but we managed to get the ball moving sideways and went at less than two and a half an over for the day.”