Gritty Yorkshire put their Roses rivals in tailspin
Yorkshire 308 & 236 beat Lancashire 196 & 173 by 175 runs
IF Lancashire’s cricketers were deeply disappointed to have lost the 256th Roses match, they cannot complain that they were robbed by bad luck, dodgy umpiring or a crucial toss. No, they lost because they were second best.
In any case, there wasn’t a toss. Steven Croft chose to bowl first and when his side were set to score 349 to win in the fourth innings, they didn’t get quite halfway to their target. They were well beaten and, to his credit, the Old Trafford coach, Ashley Giles accepted the fact.
But events at Headingley this week will not only have caused anxiety in Burnley and Bacup. They may have produced a few worried glances in Birmingham and Blaydon, too.
For the truth is that Yorkshire managed to win the Roses match quite comfortably in the end without ever playing at their best.
In their first innings they were 74-5 and in their second, 89-6.Yet thanks to Adil Rashid, Tim Bresnan and the other seambowling batsmen, Yorkshire got themselves out of those predicaments. Rather as they did in 2014 and 2015, in fact. And we know how those seasons ended up.
“Our form doesn’t warrant us being top of the league, but we are finding a way to win,” said the Yorkshire skipper Andrew Gale as he reflected on the victory which left his team joint-top of Division One in terms of points gained but second to Lancashire because Croft’s men had won a game more.
“If you look at some of the teams that have been successful in previous years before us, someone like Durham, they always found a way. It didn’t matter if they got bowled out for 200, they found a way to get back in the game.
“The encouraging thing is that we’re still winning games of cricket even though we’re not firing all throughout the team.
“We know we haven’t played that well. We played decent against Surrey but two guys won us the game, really, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow. In this game against Lancashire, everyone’s chipped in throughout.We are still searching for an enthralling win like we’ve had over the last two years when we’ve rolled teams over.” But if Gale needed any other bonus from this week’s Roses match, apart from the kudos of beating Lancashire at home for only the second time since 1992, it came in the form of a burly allrounder who rarely nets, bowls very straight indeed and believes that if a ball if pitched up it should probably be dispatched into the next parish. Rashid scored more runs, took more wickets and had a fine match against Lancashire but there is a helluva good argument that Bresnan’s 98 runs and six wickets were the key difference between the sides. And when Yorkshire get their other injured seamers back, they will be more than a force to be reckoned with. “Tim Bresnan gave us a lot more balance in our attack and he’s been a massive miss for us,” said Gale. “And if we can get our top five batsmen clicking and Dave Willey and Matt Fisher back in the mix with the ball, Ryan Sidebottom as well, so we can manage workloads, we’ll be in a great position.”