These are not the droids you’re looking for…they’re bowling machines
Friends Provident: Yorkshire v Derbyshire – Headingley, 27th April
The kind of overcast, drizzly weather you get in Leeds on a typical murky April day, can be a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand you know you’re in for a frustrating time, waiting around for the cricket to get going. On the other, you know that when it does finally start, the opposition is already behind the eight ball by having to play our attack in conditions tailor made for them. It doesn’t seem to matter how hard the Yorkshire top order have to work for runs, as we can perm any four seamers from seven or eight, who’ll have the opposition batsmen in even more trouble, cluelessly groping around like teenage boys confronted with their first bra-strap.
Today’s match against Derbyshire was a perfect example. Miserable weather put back the start of the match till four in the afternoon and reduced it to a couple of dozen overs each. Even when we got on the pitch it was still the kind of day that’d have a North Sea oil rigger watching from the safety of cover. With the result that batting became a case of survival over style, as seventeen wickets fell for just over two hundred, with a run rate of four and a half an over in what was essentially little more than a 20/20 game. You can’t see the Indian Premier League worrying about this kind of competition.
IPL style cheerleader: Would find Headingley in April ‘a bit nippy’
But you can only play according to the conditions and adapting to this kind of bleak early season fare is something the white rose does well. In fact, this game had strong echoes of the preceding championship match, all be it in microcosm. As with the Hampshire game, the difference between the teams was that the Yorkshire pace attack bowled well as a unit, making better use of the conditions and the Yorkshire innings was held together by the one person who managed to master the pitch. In this case a fine attacking knock by Young Adil that seems to confirm he’ll only be absent from the Yorkshire one-day team sheet from now on if he’s being rested. Forty-one might not sound much, but in this match it was worth a century on a flat pitch and some. He won us this game and I doubt it’ll be the only one this season.
Oh, and before I finish, a few of you have been asking me why I sometimes refer to Adil as ‘Young Skywalker’. Despite what some people think, it’s not because he can feel a disturbance in the ‘force’ whenever the Chief Exec visits the dressing room. Although occupying the peg nearest to the door, he is closest to the accompanying cloud of Hai Karate, which produces a similar invisible chokehold as Darth Vader.
No, Adil has got himself into the habit of making light-sabre noises whenever he plays a shot. He does it under his breath and thinks no one has noticed, but with ears the size of mine I can almost hear what people are thinking in the nets. I’ve not mentioned it to the other lads yet, as they’ll just rib him for being nerdy. Even Joe Sayers would. And he’s got a degree in physics…
Pshhhhewwww. Whummmm, whummmm etc…
Si’ thee later,
Len
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