Yorkshire CCC move to the brink of safety after another professional display
THERE were a few boos when umpires Steve O’Shaughnessy and Mike Burns took the players off the field on three separate occasions on Friday, but not many.
For all that the Yorkshire members love to see cricket, they love even more to see Yorkshire doing well, or at least not in the Second Division of the County Championship.
There is next-to-no chance of relegation now as this third day followed a near-perfect script, the home side’s performance once more professional.
Needing just a draw to guarantee top-flight status, which meant that stoppages for the weather were hardly unwelcome, a club promoted 12 months ago took a big step towards avoiding the drop, moving so far towards safety, in fact, that danger is barely visible now in the rear-view mirror.
Heading into Saturday’s last day of the season, a finish so late in the year that the Football League campaign has already been running for eight weeks, the situation is this… Yorkshire are 465-9 in their first innings replying to Durham’s 346, a lead of 119.
They would already be safe had Surrey completed victory over Hampshire in Southampton on Friday, something that looked odds-on when the hosts collapsed from 61-0 to 148-9 in pursuit of 181 to win only for bad light to intervene on the south-coast, too.
A Surrey win would be a remarkable result for Durham, who would then need only to draw to finish above Hampshire and relegate them, although should Hampshire win, that would mean that Durham would somehow have to win this match to stay up, a near impossible task.
But George Hill, who contributed a season’s-best 88 to Yorkshire’s score here, advancing from an overnight 23 after the hosts resumed on 314-5, admitted that the pendulum had swung firmly towards the White Rose, who have simply taken care of their own affairs.
“Definitely,” he said. “I think a few lads were watching the Surrey-Hampshire game, watching that unfold, but we’re in a good position now.
“We just wanted to bat as long as we could today, and we’re pretty happy, with all the lads having taken responsibility. The target now is to sign off with a win.”
Due to the quality of their batting on day two, led by Mayank Agarwal, the Indian overseas player who scored a magnificent 175, Yorkshire had seemed in little danger of losing this game going into its second half.
Hill and Matty Revis stretched their sixth-wicket stand in watchful fashion in the early exchanges, ones played beneath pleasant sunshine before it clouded over horribly from midday, the floodlights battling for supremacy with battleship-grey skies.
With the pitch easy-paced and the Durham attack toothless, barring the excellent Ben Raine, Hill and Revis had lifted their stand to 50 inside 16 overs when Raine took the first wicket 40 minutes in, Revis trapped by a good one that swung back in.
Yorkshire had taken the lead by the time Dom Bess’s departure left them 357-7, pulling Matthew Potts to deep-backward square-leg. It brought Jordan Thompson to the crease amid warm applause on his last Yorkshire appearance, the Warwickshire-bound all-rounder getting off the mark with a thumping off-driven boundary off Potts.
With Hill pacing his innings superbly at the other end, pulling confidently and taking no risks, Thompson ensured that Yorkshire would take a significant lead, the eighth-wicket pair adding 86 inside 24 overs.
Thompson picked up Will Rhodes for a lovely leg-side six, while Hill pulled Potts away to reach his half-century from 105 balls with his seventh boundary.
Hill deserved a hundred but was undone by Shafiqullah Ghafari, the leg-spinner, who slipped one beneath his bat as he tried to turn to leg.
It has been a strange game for Ghafari, who has gone for plenty of runs but also taken four wickets, including those of Agarwal and Adam Lyth, the latter making his 250th first-class appearance.
Even Matt Milnes, the No 10, took a liking to the leg-spinner, pulling him away for six before Ghafari had his revenge when Milnes went after one tossed up outside the off stump and edged to slip.
Earlier, bad light forced an early lunch at 12.10, then an early tea at 2.35 (who the heck takes their tea at 2.35?!), followed by another stoppage at 3.25pm that ultimately proved terminal.
The call-off was confirmed a couple of hours later.
Yorkshire are almost there, so close they can touch it.