Yorkshire CCC v Notts CCC: Hosts in battle for survival
DEATH by a thousand cuts. But not necessarily square cuts. A few more of those would be useful from Yorkshire’s point of view but they head into day four clinging on for life, like those at the hands of the Chinese slicers.
Set 463 for victory - more runs than they have ever chased to win a first-class game - Yorkshire are 176-5 in their second innings, 286 adrift.
A fourth defeat in seven matches beckons, barring one of Headingley’s famous miracles.
Nottinghamshire’s position was already strong at the start of day three.
The First Division leaders were 227-3 in their second innings, 296 ahead. Had they declared there and then, Yorkshire’s task would already have been challenging. As it was, Notts had yet more suffering to inflict.
The visitors batted on until 2.35pm by this watch (Yorkshire Post standard issue) having reached 393-8.
Joe Clarke lifted his overnight score of 73 to 94, then fell leg-before to Jordan Thompson, who went off later with what looked like a side strain, the T20 Blast - his main forte - a few days away.
Jack Haynes, with whom Clarke added 95 for the fourth wicket, lifted his score from 13 at the start to 43 before becoming one of four wickets to fall to the second new ball.
Haynes walked towards a delivery from Ben Coad and aimed a strange sort of thrash at it, the ball taking the inside-edging on its way through to wicketkeeper Harry Duke, who grabbed the chance one handed, flying to his left.
A word on Duke.
Having not played a Championship match for Yorkshire since September 2022, the 23-year-old kept very well and took four catches in the second innings. From Yorkshire’s point of view, it can only be hoped that no one from the Indian Premier League was watching his performance.
In front of 647 spectators who braved the windiest of days, no mean feat beneath the cloudy skies and amid the occasional squally shower, Nottinghamshire fell to 315-6 when Jack White had Kyle Verreynne edging to second slip.
Straight after lunch, Liam Patterson-White lofted the same bowler to Dawid Malan at mid-on, and the scoreboard showed 333-8 when Lyndon James aimed a leg-side mow at Coad and was magnificently caught at mid-off by White, who somehow judged the flight of the skier in the swirling wind and dived full-length to complete the catch.
That the pitch was still good enough was evidenced by the fact that Brett Hutton and Dillon Pennington added an unbroken 60 from 46 balls for the ninth wicket before Haseeb Hameed called his men in, the pair attacking at every opportunity as the declaration loomed.
Hutton’s 44 from 26 balls contained four fours and two sixes and Pennington’s 22 - also from 26 balls - one six. For Yorkshire, Coad was the most successful bowler with 3-64, although Thompson would have joined him on the three-wicket mark had George Hill not put down Hutton at slip on 10, low to his left.
Yorkshire’s highest-ever run-chase is 404 - a certain Anthony McGrath steering the side home with an unbeaten 165 in a seven-wicket win at Leicester in 2005.
The highest run-chase at Headingley – would you Adam and Eve it – is also 404, achieved by Hampshire the following year and, famously, by Don Bradman’s Australia in the 1948 Ashes Test, Bradman and Arthur Morris scoring big hundreds.
That put the size of Yorkshire’s task into context, although their second innings began promisingly as Adam Lyth and Fin Bean shared 40 inside 10 overs.
Then Bean, who had played well, was given out leg-before to Pennington before the all-important wicket of Lyth - following a second-wicket stand of 74 with James Wharton - came as a blow to the hosts.
Lyth had moved to within seven of overtaking Hameed (734) as the First Division’s leading scorer when he tried to strike left-arm spinner Patterson-White’s third ball square on the offside off the back foot only to get an edge through to wicketkeeper Verreynne.
Lyth’s departure for 44 was soon followed by that of Malan, who struck three lovely offside fours in making 12 from nine balls but was bowled by a peach from Patterson-White which turned appreciably back through the gate.
Wharton, a batsman rising in stature to match his great height, went to his fourth fifty in his last six Championship innings from 75 balls with eight fours, but he became Patterson-White’s third victim when, having switched to the Howard Stand end, the spinner trapped him lbw for 58 as he pushed forward.
A peculiarity of Wharton’s season is that his five half-centuries all told have been between 58 and 69; he is too good a player for more hundreds not to flow.
Duke fell to a brute of a ball from Pennington in the final over, caught behind taking evasive action, Notts closing in on the kill.