Things Fall Apart

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Championship: Yorkshire v Lancashire – Headingley, 9th – 11th August

They say be careful what you wish for. Well, we’ve been wishing for a chance to finish a game for the last three months and when the opportunity finally arrives, it brings one of Yorkshire’s most damaging defeats in years. Not only did our chickens come home to roost in this match, they decided to shack up with a family of foxes as well. In fact, pretty much the only positive to come from this game was that Lancashire left out Dominic Cork, so we were at least spared the sight of his gurning, smirking face all over the Headingley square every time we lost a wicket.

Lancashire’s Peter Pan: Endlessly enthusiastic, eternally young, and secretly you hope he gets eaten by a crocodile.

After winning the toss and deciding to bat, Yorkshire were effectively out of the game within 45 minutes of the start of play, as we quickly found themselves 22/5. It might be possible to salvage a little pride if that could all be put down to a brilliantly incisive spell from Lancashire’s opening bowlers, but the way the lads got out just doesn’t back that up. LBW shouldering arms, bowled by a full toss, caught down the leg side and then finally hooking the ball straight down deep backward square-leg’s throat. All of which adds up to the cricketing equivalent of bending over to pick up the soap on your first day in prison.

After that start, Chilton brought on the change bowlers from hell – Flintoff and Muralitharan – with the innings now pretty much doomed. But for another couple of solid contributions from Adil and Bres, we could well have suffered the ignominy of being rolled over for double figures. In fact those two, plus the missing Jacques Rudolph, are the only ones to come out with their reputations undamaged from a first day that saw Lancashire finish on 146/2, already two runs ahead on first innings.

Think you’ve had a bad day at work? Try being 22/5 and then seeing these two jokers come on to bowl…

If our first day was bad, the second was even worse, as Lancashire’s batsmen amassed a near 400 run lead at an absolute canter. As disasters go, this match was rapidly turning from Hindenburg into Titanic, with the role of iceberg being played by Paul Horton’s 149, whilst Stuart Law’s rapid fire double ton did an excellent job of cutting free the lifeboats before they could be used.

It’s frightening to think that these days Law would probably struggle to get into an Australian third XI. I say Australian, but of course as we now know, Stuart is in fact as English as vegemite on toast and taking pot shots at roos from your back porch.

Stuart Law: 25,000 first class runs and a roo-free garden. What more could a fair dinkum Pom want?

Whilst Yorkshire’s title ambitions were being ripped apart in the middle, I was taking the opportunity to hide away in the depths of Headingley with Andy Fogarty and his ground staff. This was as much to do with events off field as on. We’d got wind that there was a full board meeting taking place and when that happens it’s always best to either make yourself look busy or disappear completely.

It’s well known that the committee members like to take the opportunity to stick their chests out and promenade themselves round the tarmac monkey run that surrounds the playing surface at Headingley. I can imagine the kind of comments they’d get thrown at them in this game. So rather than risk having that passed on to me, when they eventually wandered in the direction of the dressing room I headed off to the safety of the ground staff. It’s the one place on the ground you can guaranteed no one ever goes.

Yorkshire management insist on a clear delineation between office and ground staff.

The coast was clear by the third day, but the dressing room wasn’t a happy place to be. Yorkshire’s second knock showed more fight, but with no one getting past fifty it was only a matter of time before we slipped to a humiliating innings defeat. And to Lancashire of all people.

What a reality check this game has been. Has the poor weather been stopping our progress or hiding our inadequacies? Do we have the firepower to bowl sides out without Hoggy? How much different would our season be if we hadn’t signed Rudolph? More questions than answers, indeed.

One thing is for sure; an innings defeat to Lancashire is as bad a result as we’ve suffered for a long time and given our top score was made by Dizzy and the best bowling analysis arguably came from Younus, we really can’t blame anyone but ourselves…

Si’thee later,

Len

My Man of the Match: The crowd for turning up (if only Yorkshire had done the same)

Result – Lancashire (22 points) beat Yorkshire (2 points) by an innings and 126 runs

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~ by lentheyorkshirekitman on 12 August, 2007.