Back to early season form

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Championship: Yorkshire v Warwickshire – Scarborough, 22nd – 24th August

If Yorkshire were a racehorse, our 2007 championship form would see Martyn Moxon being hauled up before the Jockey Club accused of playing fast and loose with the handicappers. First we were brilliant, then disappointing, then wet through, then embarrassing, before arriving back at brilliant again. What exactly are we this year? Judging by the last three days at Scarborough: inconsistent and bloody freezing.

After losing the toss we were invited to have a bowl, as Darren Maddy unsurprisingly decided not to expose any of the Warwickshire fielders to the risk of frostbite. Blimey it’s been perishing for this game. It’s a good job I remembered to pack plenty of extra sweaters and those new fangled liquid packets that warm up your hands. Without them I’d have been frozen.

If a local like me was feeling it, you can only imagine what it was like for our ‘new boy’ Inzy. Having turned up a few days ago, after working hard to lose over a stone in weight, he was forced to take the field wearing so many sweaters it looked like he’d eaten Younus Khan rather than replaced him. The first couple of hours found him shuffling around from foot to foot in a way that was probably designed to keep him warm, but in fact made it look like he was nervously expecting a pack of migrating polar bears to burst onto the pitch at any moment.

Inzy makes the first mistake of his Yorkshire career

Not that he had to stay in the field for long, as a great all round bowling display lead by Hoggy skittled Warwickshire out for 129. Hoggy was still easing himself back from injury during the last game and wasn’t at his very best. But he’s a class act and a week later saw the spring back in his run-up that makes him such a cutting edge in championship cricket.

Patches of black ice on the wicket made Hoggy almost unplayable

Yorkshire’s innings saw quite a few changes in our line up, as Inzy replaced Younus, AJ came in for Dizzy and Virgil and Andy Gale opened instead of Slo-Joe and Chalky. It’s not really a surprise that those two are being rested, as their run of form has been so poor of late it looks like they’re using our scorecards to communicate with each other in binary.

And the combined contribution of the incoming four? Thirty-nine runs. Which would have been a problem if the rest of our top order hadn’t plundered another five hundred odd at more than five runs an over. With the majority coming from a sublime double ton from Jacques and the third first class century of the season from Brez, whose batting has come along in leaps and bounds this season.

Timmy: Our little boy has grown up into a genuine all-rounder

Quite how the same pitch can produce 129 all out and 561/7 declared, is hard to explain. Certainly on this evidence Warwickshire are in an absolute mess, with their bowlers looking insipid, batsmen leaden footed and the team in general giving the impression they’d rather be playing cricket on a nice beach somewhere. Not Scarborough beach, obviously. Hypothermia in August is no laughing matter.

Part of the explanation might lay in the attitude the two sides took to batting, with Warwickshire looking to hang in after a bad start, whilst Yorkshire’s response to being 50/3 was playing with much more aggression. As with the declarations in the last match, you’re rather left wondering if this more aggressive approach wouldn’t have been advisable earlier in the season when we were looking to maintain our momentum. If we’d done that the other sides might be needing snookers to catch us by now.

Normally, when you ask a side to follow on, you expect a bit more fight from them second time round. I was confidently predicting exactly that as the lads plodded back onto the pitch for Warwickshire’s second innings. An hour of back bending effort from Gough and Hoggy later, the bears were 40/7 and I was deciding to keep my predictions to myself in future.

Yorkshire’s other chuckle brothers: A wicket to me, to you, to me…

There was some late order hitting out from Ambrose and the Warwickshire tail, but the game was pretty much up. With the away team out for 222, and beaten by an enormous innings and 210 run margin.

After the depression of the last two games, we’ve found ourselves back at the top of the table again, with our fate in our own hands. How quickly things can chance, and with Yorkshire, how unpredictably too…

Si’thee later,

Len

My Man of the Match: Rudolph (just beating Hoggy)

Result – Yorkshire (22 points) Beat Warwickshire (2 points) by an Innings and 210 runs

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~ by lentheyorkshirekitman on 25 August, 2007.