Bairstow’s onslaught puts Yorkshire in command
Yorkshire are all set to win the Roses match, a rollicking one too, for the 61st time. Lancashire, who have won only 36 of these encounters (with more than half of them drawn) have to score 129 more runs without any specialist batsmen left except their captain Liam Livingstone, and he has a broken left thumb. Defeat would propel Lancashire towards the second division along with Worcestershire.
As a player who is concussed during a game can now be replaced, why not one who has suffered a fracture? Unlike aches and strains, fractures are policeable: a X-ray should be sufficient for a replacement to be allowed.
But only if Jos Buttler were to bat again, in Livingstone’s stead, could Lancashire get close.
The turning point – if it was not Livingstone breaking his thumb on day one – was Jonny Bairstow’s counter-attack on the second morning. There are a lot of hot tin roofs this summer and Bairstow is batting like a cat on them: after nine balls he had scored 22, three wickets having fallen in the first six overs as the new ball nipped, and he rampaged on to 82 off 67 balls – and this included slowing down after lunch until he was dismissed by Graham Onions, who cleverly went wide of the crease and drew Bairstow into a skimming drive to point.
Neville Cardus would have turned in his grave if he had seen the first half of Yorkshire’s innings. In his day the mantra in a Roses match was “no fours before lunch”: in this case Yorkshire were 63 for three off 10 overs, as if it were a white-ball game, and reached 154 for four by the interval off only 25.1 overs. There were no “leaves” before lunch, at least by Bairstow, who reached 72 before he let a ball through to the keeper.
One of the fascinations was seeing how the England players on one side bowled to the England players on the other. James Anderson tried bowling straight at Bairstow with two short midwickets, then wide of off stump with the keeper up. Overall Anderson was the least successful and threatening of Lancashire’s four seamers but nobody knows better how to build up for a Test series.
Anderson did not bowl much to Joe Root as he had his Test captain promptly caught behind. In his two consecutive ODI hundreds against India, Root’s weight had been so well distributed, but this time he was caught on the crease neither forward nor back and edged a catch. Whether playing a T20 game for Yorkshire last Friday had a disruptive effect on his mindset will never be known.
But Root, though he made only 22 and three, had the last laugh at Buttler’s expense. On a dry pitch of increasingly uneven bounce, Lancashire had very little chance provided Yorkshire’s seamers bowled wicket to wicket – until Buttler batted superbly, using his nous and feet. As Ben Coad had gone off with a side-strain, Yorkshire needed Buttler’s wicket to ensure a night’s sleep – and Root, round the wicket, had Buttler top-edging a little sweep to leg-slip.
“Jos was playing lovely, so that wicket was important,” Bairstow said. “We’ve got a decent opportunity, but there’s still a way to go. Rooty will play a key part tomorrow because it’s turning now.”
Lancashire at least had the consolation of Haseeb Hameed reverting, at last, to something like what he was in India the winter before last. When he reached 22 Hameed brought up his 100 – 100 runs for this season, that is, and this was his 13th championship innings. In his past four innings he had been dismissed shouldering arms. But the pearls are still there – the drive wide of mid-on, the back-cuts with real wristwork that add speed to the ball. They just need stringing together.