When magnificent Moeen made hay at Scarborough

It was, by any measure, one of the finest - if not the finest - performance of his career.

Moeen scored 219 in his solitary innings and, with the ball, took 2-40 and 6-49 for match figures of 8-89, Worcestershire winning by an innings and 186 runs.

It was, in a way, Yorkshire’s misfortune that they ran into Moeen in that match at all.

The then 30-year-old had lost his Test place after a poor 2017-18 in Australia and New Zealand, and although he was in the squad for the concurrent third Test against India at Trent Bridge in the August of 2018, he was released by England to play at Scarborough.

It was one of just three Championship appearances that Moeen made that year, along with a game against Somerset at New Road in late July, and the return fixture against Yorkshire at the same ground in late September.

He still had his white-ball commitments with England and big series that summer against Australia and India.

Worcestershire arrived at Scarborough bottom of Division One to face a Yorkshire team who themselves flirted with relegation before pulling clear towards the end to finish the season in fourth place.

Moeen took the captaincy reins for Worcestershire and, for the first of only two times in first-class cricket, David Willey did so for Yorkshire during a campaign in which the hosts used five different captains in their 13 Championship matches, the opening game against Essex at Headingley having been washed out entirely following the so-called Beast from the East storm.

Gary Ballance, the official club captain, would relinquish the reins due to a stress-related illness, with Joe Root, Adam Lyth and, primarily, Steve Patterson deputising.

Willey, who had not even played a first-class game for some 16 months, must have wondered what he had let himself in for as his opposite number stole the show.

That year, the toss was uncontested and Yorkshire it was who batted first.

They scored 216, Kane Williamson, the New Zealander making his penultimate appearance for the county, top-scoring with 87 before Moeen bowled him for his first wicket of the match.

Moeen’s second and final first innings wicket was that of Willey, caught by Joe Clarke for a sixth-ball duck.

Had it not been for Jack Brooks’s 38 from No 10, the second-highest score, Yorkshire’s predicament would have been even worse as a 19-year-old Dillon Pennington led the way with 4-53 and a 20-year-old Josh Tongue chipped in with the wicket of Harry Brook.

At stumps, the wooden spoonists-elect were more than satisfied, having reached 39-0 in reply, with Daryl Mitchell on 16 and Tom Fell 21.

On day two, Mitchell and Fell lifted their stand to 111 before Brooks had Fell lbw for 45. Mitchell and Ali took the total to 310-1 at the close (Mitchell 140, Moeen 107) - and then on to 405 on day three by the time Lyth had Mitchell cutting to Tim Bresnan at slip to end a fine hand of 178 from 333 balls with 22 fours.

Moeen and Mitchell’s partnership was worth 294, a second-wicket record for the fixture.

For what remains only the second time in his career, Moeen brought up a double century score, his highest being 250 for Worcestershire against Glamorgan at New Road in 2013.

He treated the Scarborough crowd to an array of graceful and elegant drives, interspersed with strokes of dismissive power as he struck 27 fours and four times cleared the boundary during an innings that spanned 277 balls.

Moeen eventually fell miscuing Bresnan high into the offside, where Brook took the catch, Worcestershire going on to 572-7 before Moeen declared.

Afterwards, he reflected with justifiable pride on an innings that lasted six hours and 20 minutes and remains the highest score by a visiting player against Yorkshire at North Marine Road.

“This has to be up there as one of my best knocks against a good attack,” he said.

“Without wanting to sound arrogant, it wasn’t an easy wicket to bat on, and I felt really good with the ball as well.”

Come the end of day three, Yorkshire’s goose was effectively cooked.

Having given up a first innings advantage of 356, they were reeling badly on 140-6.

Williamson, the star man, was back in the pavilion for what would prove the highest score of 61, with no one else reaching 20.

Yorkshire lost their final four wickets for 30 on the fourth morning to be dismissed for 170, Ali’s six scalps being those of Lyth, Brook, Ballance, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Willey once more, and Matthew Fisher.

Worcestershire had won for the second and last time in the Championship that season, having thrashed Lancashire - with whom they went down - by 202 runs at New Road.

“A festival crowd totalling over 13,000 watched in stunned silence,” wrote Wisden of the Scarborough mauling.

Remarkably, Worcestershire’s relegation was their sixth since 2004, which, on the flip side, at least showed a facility for bouncing back.

In the return game at New Road that September, Moeen made a pair of 60s and took two wickets but was overshadowed by a big hundred from Ballance and by runs and wickets for Brooks on his final appearance before moving to Somerset, which helped to seal a seven-wicket win.

Moeen’s heroics at Scarborough may not have kept Worcestershire in Division One, but they did help him back into the Test side.

He had been dropped for six Tests from the preceding Antipodean winter, with Dom Bess preferred for the summer’s opening series against Pakistan before Adil Rashid was controversially recalled for the subsequent India series despite having declined to play Championship cricket for Yorkshire.

Moeen returned for the fourth Test of that India series in Southampton, scoring 40 in the first innings and taking nine wickets in the match as England gained an unassailable 3-1 lead.

They won the fifth Test at the Oval to wrap up a thumping 4-1 triumph.

Moeen’s feat of scoring a double hundred and taking a six-wicket haul in a Championship match had only been done seven times previously, and never before in a game involving Yorkshire.