Yorkshire CCC v Essex CCC: No one having a ball with the Kookaburra

And then I woke up.

Someone prodded me in the ribs as I lay prone at my laptop.

“Chris? Chris?”

“Is he dead?” asked someone.

Er, no, they weren’t that lucky.

But if the heat didn’t get you - 31 degrees in the ambling afternoon - the cricket might as the Kookaburra ball continued to frustrate.

As Yorkshire reached 143-3 in reply to Essex’s 368 at the game’s midway point, one remembered the words of Robert William Trevor Key, the managing director of England men’s cricket, who enthused after the Kookaburra led to 17 draws in the first 18 County Championship matches of last season: “It’s been fantastic. You see what four-day cricket is meant to be.

“I would use the Kookaburra all the time. English cricket would be much better off for it.”

Taxi for Mr Key, please, straight to York Sports Club on Shipton Road.

Or, better still, point him in the direction of YouTube, where he can watch back the first two days, especially the first, and see whether he still thinks that the Kookaburra is the best thing since roast beef and Yorkshire pud.

As those spectators who have come to Clifton Park could testify, some 1,500 yesterday after around 2,000 were present on day one, it is making for laborious cricket - not that it is any fault of the players themselves.

With the Kookaburra liable to go soft, the pitch here slow and the day oppressive, this was a much better advert for the traditional English Dukes than any green seamer at Headingley, with Key’s support of the Kookaburra (in use for four midsummer rounds this season) based on the theory that it is harder to get batsmen out and therefore encourages pace bowlers and spinners to develop the skills necessary for Test cricket.

Instead, as Anthony McGrath, the Yorkshire head coach, rightly said last week, it makes for tedious entertainment and damages the tournament’s integrity.

McGrath’s, it hardly needs saying, is not the minority view.

At least these sides have done their best to produce a competitive contest, one which could yet produce a positive result in spite of it all.

After Essex resumed their first innings on 248-3, Yorkshire stuck to their task as the visitors lost their last seven wickets for 120 runs in 40 overs, most of them, in fairness, through some pretty poor shots.

Matt Critchley was unlucky, the ball coming off various parts of his body as he played on to Jack White, but Jordan Cox pushed at one from George Hill and was caught behind, then Charlie Allison slapped the same bowler to point - the first significant involvement in the match for Abdullah Shafique, Yorkshire’s overseas debutant.

After lunch, which the visitors took at 328-6, the first session having produced only 80 runs in 31 overs, Michael Pepper was caught down the leg-side off White; Simon Harmer was taken at slip off Dom Bess; Shane Snater was caught at cow corner off a whack at Bess, and Khaleel Ahmed was bowled all ends up by Ben Coad, leaving Noah Thain stranded on 50.

Yorkshire bowled well as a unit - White the most successful with 3-68, with Hill, Coad and Bess each taking two wickets.

The only real blight on Yorkshire’s display was their catching, with a handful of chances going down during the course of the innings, not all of them straightforward.

But it was tough work for the players in the punishing heat, which must have been taxing even for today’s finely-tuned athletes.

Fresh from his maiden double hundred at Trent Bridge last week, a morale-boosting performance if ever there was one, Fin Bean helped Yorkshire to make a confident start to their own first innings.

Bean and Adam Lyth added 81 for the first wicket inside 27 overs, picking off anything loose with a minimum of fuss, before Bean was somewhat unfortunately caught down the leg-side as he tried to flick away a ball from Snater.

Wharton came down the track to Harmer and was caught at mid-on, which left Yorkshire 110-2 in the 35th over, but Shafique got off the mark with the type of shot that Wharton had been trying to play, launching Harmer down the ground to the City End boundary.

However, the Pakistani added only one more to his tally before he, too, was caught down the leg-side, brilliantly by a diving Pepper off Thain.

Lyth went to his seventh score of 50 or more in this season’s Championship from 110 balls and had reached 63 at stumps, with Jonny Bairstow on 14, a stand worth 18 in 13.5 overs telling its own story – not least of the pair’s determination and battling qualities.