Yorkshire CCC looking to back up comeback win to prove title credentials
ONE swallow does not make a summer or, in this case, one win does not make for a Championship challenge after Yorkshire’s magnificent victory in Somerset.
Only a collection of wins will suffice if Yorkshire are to compete for the four-day title, an ambition rocked by a defeat and two draws in their opening three games but re-energised by events at the Cooper Associates County Ground in Taunton.
The position in that game at the end of day one was bleaker than Bleak House on a particularly bleak night.
Somerset were 201-3 having dismissed Yorkshire for 162 and anyone stating that the visitors could somehow win from that situation would have been easy to spot.
They would have had a tablecloth wrapped around their head, for example, and a couple of clothes pegs sticking from their nostrils.
They would have been wearing sandwich boards proclaiming that “The End of the World is Nigh” and conspicuous by the fact that there was no one around them within a 50-yard radius.
Funny old game…
Win it Yorkshire somehow did as they restricted Somerset to 274, racked up 371 in their second innings and then removed their hosts for 184 to prevail by 75 runs, the sort of comeback that does wonders for a side’s confidence and one that reflects well on the players’ character.
As Anthony McGrath, the Yorkshire head coach, said in the aftermath of that triumph, Yorkshire’s feet remain firmly on the ground. They know they will need plenty more than that particular swallow this summer as they look to back it up when they take on Warwickshire in the game at Edgbaston that starts on Friday.
“No one’s getting carried away,” insisted McGrath. “It was incredible to win from where we were, but we can’t be in that position every week because we’re not going to win many games.
“We won’t get carried away, but it’s been backs-to-the-wall and to get a result like that changes the table pretty dramatically (Yorkshire are seventh in Division One - 22 points behind leaders Nottinghamshire).
“I don’t think we’ve been far away; we’ve just had crazy hours in games and it’s hard to drag it back at this level.”
McGrath said he had been banging on about the word “belief” and that fightback showed what his players can do. Although Somerset had a callow batting line-up - three of their top-seven (Josh Thomas, Will Smeed and Thomas Rew) had only eight first-class appearances between them and another (Archie Vaughan) had made only 20 - they are widely-tipped to do well this year.
It was perhaps not the worst time to play them given they were without the likes of injured former Yorkshire batsman Tom Kohler-Cadmore, along with spinner Jack Leach, but they are always a testing proposition at home.
What Yorkshire showed is if they can do the nuts and bolts properly - rotate strike with the bat, hold lines and lengths - they are a testing proposition in their own right.
To this pen, the catalyst for that final-day triumph was really George Hill, the seam-bowling all-rounder.
What did Hill do? He consistently put the ball on a good line and length and challenged the stumps and the outside edge. There was nothing fancy about it - just the basics of the game, skilfully repeated.
That laid the platform for the spinners to do their stuff, Dom Bess and Joe Root each taking four wickets.
There is no Root this week; he is sitting this one out. But in comes Harry Brook for his first appearance of the season, with both England players available for next week’s match against Surrey at Headingley before they depart for international duty and the Test series against New Zealand.
Brook made only one Championship appearance last year - also against Warwickshire, scoring 33 and 20 at Headingley in a five-wicket defeat.
Warwickshire have an identical record this season to Yorkshire - two draws, one win and one defeat - but are three places and 10 points better off courtesy of eight more batting points and two more with the ball.
The hosts have a familiar figure in their ranks in the form of Jordan Thompson, who left Yorkshire for the Midlands at the end of last season. Thompson has seven wickets in his four Championship appearances for Warwickshire at 43.42 and 105 runs at 17.50, averages he would no doubt prefer to be the other way round.
Yorkshire are once again without Sam Whiteman, who was hit while batting against Sussex at Headingley a fortnight ago, while Academy prospect Brad Sylvester, an 18-year-old seamer, gets his first taste of a senior squad call-up.
Yorkshire (from): Bairstow (captain), Bean, Bess, Brook, Cliff, Hill, Luxton, Lyth, Moriarty, Revis, Sylvester, van Beek, Wharton, White.