Yorkshire CCC climb out of relegation zone with win over Sussex
THE seas were rough and the wind was raw. Summer had deserted the North Yorkshire coast. Only the die-hards ventured for the last rites here and the majority got what they came and hoped for – a Yorkshire win.
To the backdrop of swaying trees and fast-moving clouds, as seagulls soared on a gusting north-westerly, Yorkshire achieved their third County Championship victory of the season, defeating Sussex by an innings and 128 runs.
In this meeting of last year’s two promoted clubs there was only one winner and only one side who ever looked likely to win, Yorkshire rising again out of the relegation zone and drawing Sussex closer towards it, the table so tight that you could barely squeeze a Yorkshire membership card between the teams.
Ironically, having joined in the game-wide condemnation of the Kookaburra ball experiment, which has led to some desperately moribund cricket, Yorkshire’s season has been ignited by it as the Dukes ball returns for September’s finale.
In the four Kookaburra rounds, expanded last season from two, Yorkshire have achieved two wins and two draws having won only once, drawn twice and lost four times with the Dukes in the season’s first half. Who says Rob Key is a blithering imbecile?
Extracting one’s tongue immediately from one’s cheek, Yorkshire have at last begun to bare their teeth following that hugely frustrating first half of the year.
There remains work to be done in the final three games – away to Somerset on September 8, the return match at Sussex the following week, and in the final fixture at home to Durham on September 24, but Yorkshire have finally flicked the switch.
That penetrating wind, which brought foaming waves crashing into the seafront on the nearby North Bay on Friday morning, along with a mad rush to reach for long-discarded coats, was a challenge for both sides when play got going beneath overcast skies.
Not least the bowlers who had to contend with its swirling and powerful blasts - although Matt Milnes and Jack White were like rocks in the storm, the pair charging in hard from the Trafalgar Square and Peasholm Park ends respectively.
Milnes it was who got matters moving for Yorkshire, striking with the 10th ball of the day – and his fourth – after Sussex had added a single to their overnight total of 115-3, still 208 runs behind.
Danial Ibrahim played a kind of walking defensive shot, a nothing shot really, and was smartly caught low to his left by Adam Lyth at second slip, having scored 51 from 119 balls.
In his next over, his tail up, the crowd roused and the visiting dressing room no doubt jittery, Milnes bowled Daniel Hughes all ends up with a ball that seemed to keep low.
Hughes added one to his overnight 56 and Sussex fell to 117-6 in the very next over, White bowling captain John Simpson shouldering arms to give Yorkshire three wickets inside the first 20 minutes and, barring calamity, the match.
Danny Lamb and Fynn Hudson-Prentice, the seventh-wicket pair, resisted for 11 overs before Will Sutherland sent down a wide ball from the Trafalgar Square end which Lamb could not resist going after, slashing horribly to wicketkeeper Harry Duke.
It was the sort of shot that might have drawn a reprimand for careless aggression in a T20, let alone a red-ball fixture with survival on the line.
It should have been 156-8 half-an-hour before lunch but James Wharton, having pulled off one of the best catches you are likely to see in the Sussex first innings, a remarkable diving effort sprinting back from mid-wicket to dismiss Tom Haines, could not quite get his paws around a sharp chance at short-leg offered by Hudson-Prentice off Dom Bess’s second ball of the day.
The opportunity was not a gimme by any stretch, but this is Wharton we are talking about. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t.
At lunch, Sussex had staggered to 166-7, the second new ball just seven overs away.
It brought no reward initially for Milnes, White and Sutherland but it did for Bess, who broke a stubborn eighth-wicket stand between Hudson-Prentice and Jack Carson, which realised 47 in a paint-drying 34.4 overs.
Carson was adjudged caught at slip by Lyth off a ball that Carson clearly thought had come off his pad/body, umpire Peter Hartley’s opinion the only one that mattered.
After that, it was over in a jiffy, Milnes having Gurinder Sandhu slicing to point and Henry Crocombe caught behind to end with 5-31 as Sussex were bowled out for 195, leaving Hudson-Prentice stranded on 52.