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The Friends Provident Trophy, 22nd April – 13th June
Someone once said, “love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage” – I think it was the three times divorced Frank Sinatra. Well, if that’s true, then Yorkshire and one-day cricket, go together like Merv Hughes and a ballet ticket. Ok, that’s a bit forced, but you get my general point – we’re pretty crap at it and always have been.
Merv the Swerve: Couldn’t give a Castlemaine XXXX about the majesty of the Grand jeté
One of the major tasks facing the new Moxon/Gough regime is sorting out Yorkshire’s approach to the one-day game. They’ve both come back with experience from others clubs and you can only hope that’s given them some new ideas about how to play the limited overs game. God knows the White Rose seem to be fresh out of them.
We actually got off to a good start, with a fairly regulation victory against Scotland following on from an impressive all round team effort in the first game at Nottingham. A match where all the batsmen made runs and the wickets were shared out between five bowlers. But that all round effort wasn’t to be replicated on a regular enough basis, as our chances of advancing beyond the group stage were scuppered by a run of three losses and two abandonments from the next six games.
You don’t need long to identify some of the problems we have. Take a quick look at the batting in the games we lost:
Leicestershire: 282/8. Rudolph getting 100, next highest Brophy, 36
Lancashire: 250-8. Mags getting 135, next highest Gale, 25
Durham: 213 all out. Mags getting 100, next highest Bres 33.
The pattern leaps out at you. Building a good one-day total is the same as in a first class match, you need to create partnerships. If you look at the games played in the North Conference, out of the thirty-eight to finish, twenty-nine were won by the team that put together the highest partnership. But in too many of our games, no one stuck around long enough to support the man in form and build a match-winning total. You have to ask, if someone can score a century on a pitch, how come no one else can manage half that?
That lack of back up for the form players was the same when we came to bowl. The opening pair did well enough. Gough proving he’s still a top one-day bowler by taking a hat full of wickets and Dizzy going for less than three and a half runs an over. But too often the support bowlers failed to break big partnerships and ended up leaking runs. By the time Gough and Gillespie came back at the end, the game was already lost.
That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom, as Pyrah and Gale seemed to benefit from a run in the side and made some useful contributions along the way. Plus it’s nice to see someone like Pyrah out in the field for us. One or two of them out there seem to be rather confused by the small round red thing that keeps whizzing past.
Richard Pyrah: The new Neil Hartley?
As a footnote, the strangest thing to come out of the group stages was Sky Sports growing obsession with Young Adil. They seemed to discuss his imminent transformation into the next Gary Sobers at every game they covered and pretty much threw the dummy out of the pram when we didn’t pick him for the game they televised at Derby. If they keep this up we’ll have to get a restraining order out. Well, who’d want Paul Allott stalking them…
Si’thee later,
Len
~ by lentheyorkshirekitman on 14 June, 2007.
Running to Stand Still
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The Friends Provident Trophy, 22nd April – 13th June
Someone once said, “love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage” – I think it was the three times divorced Frank Sinatra. Well, if that’s true, then Yorkshire and one-day cricket, go together like Merv Hughes and a ballet ticket. Ok, that’s a bit forced, but you get my general point – we’re pretty crap at it and always have been.
Merv the Swerve: Couldn’t give a Castlemaine XXXX about the majesty of the Grand jeté
One of the major tasks facing the new Moxon/Gough regime is sorting out Yorkshire’s approach to the one-day game. They’ve both come back with experience from others clubs and you can only hope that’s given them some new ideas about how to play the limited overs game. God knows the White Rose seem to be fresh out of them.
We actually got off to a good start, with a fairly regulation victory against Scotland following on from an impressive all round team effort in the first game at Nottingham. A match where all the batsmen made runs and the wickets were shared out between five bowlers. But that all round effort wasn’t to be replicated on a regular enough basis, as our chances of advancing beyond the group stage were scuppered by a run of three losses and two abandonments from the next six games.
You don’t need long to identify some of the problems we have. Take a quick look at the batting in the games we lost:
Leicestershire: 282/8. Rudolph getting 100, next highest Brophy, 36
Lancashire: 250-8. Mags getting 135, next highest Gale, 25
Durham: 213 all out. Mags getting 100, next highest Bres 33.
The pattern leaps out at you. Building a good one-day total is the same as in a first class match, you need to create partnerships. If you look at the games played in the North Conference, out of the thirty-eight to finish, twenty-nine were won by the team that put together the highest partnership. But in too many of our games, no one stuck around long enough to support the man in form and build a match-winning total. You have to ask, if someone can score a century on a pitch, how come no one else can manage half that?
That lack of back up for the form players was the same when we came to bowl. The opening pair did well enough. Gough proving he’s still a top one-day bowler by taking a hat full of wickets and Dizzy going for less than three and a half runs an over. But too often the support bowlers failed to break big partnerships and ended up leaking runs. By the time Gough and Gillespie came back at the end, the game was already lost.
That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom, as Pyrah and Gale seemed to benefit from a run in the side and made some useful contributions along the way. Plus it’s nice to see someone like Pyrah out in the field for us. One or two of them out there seem to be rather confused by the small round red thing that keeps whizzing past.
Richard Pyrah: The new Neil Hartley?
As a footnote, the strangest thing to come out of the group stages was Sky Sports growing obsession with Young Adil. They seemed to discuss his imminent transformation into the next Gary Sobers at every game they covered and pretty much threw the dummy out of the pram when we didn’t pick him for the game they televised at Derby. If they keep this up we’ll have to get a restraining order out. Well, who’d want Paul Allott stalking them…
Si’thee later,
Len
~ by lentheyorkshirekitman on 14 June, 2007.
Posted in Andy Gale, Darren Gough, Jason Gillespie, Martyn Moxon, Richard Pyrah, Sky Sports Commentators, cricket