Stevie produces a wonder display in real thriller
Yorkshire 406 & 167 lost to Middlesex 577 by an innings and 4 runs
ITwas the sort of cricket match even neutral supporters followed on Twitter. It was the type of game that threw out tales and statistics like sparks from a bonfire. Even on an evening strewn with big sports stories, people noticed that Middlesex had beaten Yorkshire by an innings at Scarborough.
“And why not?” as the film critic Barry Norman used to say. Well, Yorkshire have been playing County Championship matches at North Marine Road since 1896 and this was the first time they had lost by an innings.
Yorkshire went into the game hoping that a victory might take them top of the table. They left Scarborough having dropped to fifth in Division One, although no one is betting that they will stay there.
Andrew Gale’s players hope to complete a hat-trick of titles in September yet Middlesex have now defeated them in each of the last three seasons. Indeed, they are the only side to have beaten Yorkshire in the Championship in that time and each of those wins has been worthy of a slim monograph.
Yet when all the stats have been digested and all the ramifications for the destiny of the title considered, it is still the human stories that grab the attention and carry the most resonance.
Take, for example, Stevie Eskinazi, whose outstanding 157 was the bedrock of Middlesex’s 577, their highest score against Yorkshire, a fact that was almost lost without trace amid Wednesday’s drama.
Until last year Eskinazi’s limited fame was more or less confined to that record of bright hopes and thwarted ambitions, the First Class Counties Second Eleven Annual. They knew about him in Stanmore, where he plays his club cricket, but that was about it.
Then he made his debut last September against – wouldn’t you know it? – Yorkshire, and was batting at the end of a first over in which Ryan Sidebottom took three wickets.
“I don’t really remember much about it because I was in and out in seven minutes or so and yet we went on to win by 246 runs by the end of the fourth day,” said Eskinazi. “I wasn't in any frame of mind to score runs but now I am a better player.”
Lancashire’s bowlers knew about Eskinazi’s quality after he had taken his maiden ton off them at Lord’s last week. This week their rivals from across the Pennines knew about it too after the 22-year-old had made his second hundred in a week.
Dropped at slip on 84 and going to his century with a nick over slip, Eskinazi, pictured right, needed his luck – but he rode it and hoped for the best going into the last day at Scarborough.
“The pitch has been swinging all game and if we can hit a few more runs I think we can put them under pressure. It could be a really interesting day,” he said on Tuesday, and you wondered if he was talking more in hope than expectation.
As it turned out,“interesting” was the least of it. Toby Roland-Jones and Tim Murtagh tore Yorkshire’s bowlers to shreds in the first 9.4 overs of the morning, whacking 107 runs in an astonishing 40 minutes’ carnage.
And no journalist was brave or cruel enough to enquire what Steve Patterson’s thoughts were after he had dropped Roland-Jones at longleg on 18 in the third over of the day.
Then Roland-Jones took the wickets of Adam Lyth and Kane Williamson before lunch and that of Patterson after tea as Middlesex’s fourbowlers ran through Yorkshire’s batting in 69 overs, winning one of the season’s most memorable games in the first over of the last hour.
“This was a hell of a win,” said Roland-Jones. No one, whatever their loyalties, gave him an argument.