Yorkshire gain the upper hand on a wicket-strewn first day
IT was a day when batting partnerships lasted about as long as Elizabeth Taylor’s marriages.
No sooner did the latest couple come together at the crease than they were going their separate ways again.
“Do you (insert name of player A) take this man (insert name of player B) to be your batting partner until stumps do you part?”
“Er, I’m not quite sure, vicar, to be perfectly honest. It’s really quite tricky batting out there.”
Fourteen wickets fell in just 80 overs as Yorkshire had the better of the first day at Edgbaston, bowling out Warwickshire for 147 and reaching 110-4 before bad light ended play with 16 overs left.
Harry Brook, the England white-ball captain, made 29 not out in his first innings of the season, sharing the one partnership of any note with James Wharton, who scored 40, the pair surviving for 11.5 overs to add 63.
Other than that, it was one of those days when it felt as if a wicket could fall at any moment. The “big first hour” on Saturday will be particularly large.
The tone was set in the game’s first over after Yorkshire won the toss and stuck ‘em in.
Jack White pitched the ball up in the channel outside Alex Davies’s off stump, and the batsman defended it with a slightly angled bat to Adam Lyth at second slip.
Warwickshire fell to 11-2 from the second ball of the fourth over, Ben Cliff having Rob Yates nibbling at one he did not need to play at, which kissed the edge on its way through to wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow.
That brought to the crease the only man who seemed capable of dealing with conditions from a Warwickshire perspective and the problems presented by the bowlers - Sam Hain.
Hain cover-drove his first ball from Cliff to the fence, turned him off his pads for four towards the short Hollies Stand boundary, and quickly looked a class apart - a bit like Elizabeth Taylor, in fact, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Plenty have been afraid of Jack White this season - not of his pace but his nagging accuracy.
White struck again when Dan Mousley chased at one and was caught by Brook at first slip.
No one could stay around long enough to keep Hain company, Beau Webster the next to go when he aimed an expansive drive at George Hill and was bowled through the gate.
A fifth wicket followed before lunch when Ed Barnard played the worst shot of the lot, throwing the kitchen sink at a wide one from Logan van Beek and edging behind, a giveaway from the Warwickshire captain.
Soon after the break came the wicket of Hain - but not before he had scored 57 from 97 balls with seven fours. Again, it was that man White who did the damage, causing the batsman to nibble at one which flew head high to Brook at first slip.
Now attention turned to a man who left Yorkshire for Warwickshire in the winter: Jordan Thompson.
He scrapped his way to eight in 47 minutes, then drove around a full-length delivery from van Beek and was lbw, leaving Warwickshire 117-9 after Zen Malik had earlier edged Cliff to Fin Bean at third slip, and Michael Booth gone to a catch behind off Hill.
At that stage, the highest partnership of the innings was the 23 between Hain and Malik for the sixth wicket, but the 10th-wicket pair of Ethan Bamber and Oliver Hannon-Dalby, the former Yorkshire pace bowler, raised that rather underwhelming bar.
They had shared 30 in 40 minutes when Bamber, having struck two leg-side sixes off van Beek and a brace of fours off White, was trapped lbw by White for the second-highest score of 28, White finishing with 4-49.
Yorkshire were soon two-down against opponents without the injured seamer Chris Woakes, a big miss for them.
Lyth was caught behind pushing forward in defence to Hannon-Dalby, the ball slanting across him, and Bean lbw to Bamber, the ball appearing to strike him outside the line.
It should have been 15-3 but Wharton was badly spilled on nought by Yates at second slip off Hannon-Dalby.
Yorkshire did lose their third wicket on 38, Matty Revis - promoted to No 4 - lbw to the probing Hannon-Dalby, after which Wharton and Brook calmed things down.
Both men were strong through the offside - Brook upper-cutting the only six of the innings off Booth - as Warwickshire’s change bowlers were not nearly as effective as Yorkshire’s.
The visitors lost Wharton just before the end, Yates this time clinging on at second slip off Thompson.