Yorkshire to play any home tie at Scarborough should they reach One-Day Cup knockouts
UNACCUSTOMED as they are to reaching the knockout stages of one-day competitions, Yorkshire could have been forgiven for missing a logistical headache that is fast looming large.
Instead, eyes have been firmly on the ball off the field as they have been on it, with the club top of Group B in the One-Day Cup and potentially one more win from booking their place.
Yorkshire’s unusual progress in the 50-over tournament - they have not won a one-day trophy for 23 years - means that they are strong favourites to finish in the top-three of their group, which would guarantee passage.
However, they could not play any knockout match at their Headingley headquarters due to the tight turnaround following Northern Superchargers’ final home game in The Hundred and also the build-up to the one-day international between England and South Africa at the venue in early September, meaning that any home Cup tie will instead be played at Scarborough.
Consequently, Yorkshire have put the North Marine Road ground on notice - a ground on which they began their Cup campaign against Warwickshire earlier this month, and at which they play their final home group game against Durham on Friday before finishing off against Sussex at Hove on Sunday and against Kent at Canterbury on Tuesday.
The club has won four of its first five matches as it pursues its first limited overs silverware since the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy in 2002, an achievement so long ago now that the players still wore whites rather than coloured clothing.
The One-Day Cup sees the 18 first-class counties in two groups of nine, with the two group winners advancing straight to the semi-finals on August 31.
Three days before that - just two days after the final round of group games and Yorkshire’s visit to Canterbury - the second and third-placed sides in each group play-off against each other, with the second-placed team having home advantage against the third-placed side from the opposite group.
The semi-finals are arranged as follows:
The winner of Group A faces the winner of the play-off between the second-placed team in Group B and the third-placed side in Group A. And the winner of Group B meets the winner of the second-placed team in Group A and the third-placed side in Group B.
The final is at Trent Bridge on September 20 - less than 48 hours after Yorkshire are due to finish a key County Championship match against Somerset at Taunton.
A semi-final at Scarborough, should it materialise, would not, in fact, be without precedent.
The first one-day game ever held there was the semi-final of the 1969 Gillette Cup, which Yorkshire went on to win by beating Derbyshire at Lord's.
First, they sent Nottinghamshire packing at North Marine Road - a few days after that business involving Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Apollo 11.
The venue had only previously staged first-class cricket and festival fixtures but Yorkshire were keen to make more use of their outgrounds at a time when they still played at Bradford, Hull, Harrogate, Middlesbrough and Sheffield, as well as Headingley.
If that sojourn to the seaside was Yorkshire’s choice, with the hosts beating Garry Sobers’s Nottinghamshire by 68 runs in front of a Scarborough record crowd of 15,242, the other semi at North Marine Road – in the Clydesdale Bank 40 in 2010 – was also because Headingley was in use for international cricket with England preparing to face Pakistan.
It took place on September 11 of that year and saw Warwickshire run out winners by four wickets as Andrew Gale’s men - despite a hundred from Jacques Rudolph - fell at the penultimate hurdle.