One-day performances giving Yorkshire plenty of reasons to be cheerful for rest of campaign
MARTYN MOXON has hailed the return of the feelgood factor to the Yorkshire dressing room.
The county’s director of cricket said that the side’s T20 performances have brought it back.
Yorkshire are firmly on course to qualify for the quarter-finals going into tonight’s match against Derbyshire at Headingley, which sees Pakistan captain Sarfaraz Ahmed debut for the hosts.
It follows some disappointing displays in the County Championship, with fourthplaced Yorkshire going into Sunday’s game against leaders Essex at Scarborough 38 points adrift having played one more match.
“There’s a feelgood factor back around the dressing room,” said Moxon. “Maybe Twenty20 came along at the right time, and it just kind of broke up the run of Championship games after a few disappointing performances.
“Going into Scarborough, I know there’ll be a real determination to finish the season strongly.
“We’ve just got to get back on the horse with the four-day stuff, and hopefully we can still have a really good season.”
Yorkshire are by no means out of Championship title contention.
Although they have only five games left, two of those are against Essex and the others are against sides in the bottom four in the form of Middlesex, Surrey and Warwickshire.
The club performed well in the 50-over Royal London Cup, winning six of eight group matches before losing in the quarter-finals.
And with only two defeats in nine T20 Blast games, Yorkshire’s white-ball cricket continues to impress.
“That’s been the pleasing aspect of the summer, our one-day performances,” added Moxon.
“We’ve worked hard on our one-day cricket and managed to find a method.
“There’s still plenty of work to do in the T20 Blast; the group is very tight, and we can’t afford to take anything for granted.
“But the signs have been encouraging for our white-ball game.”
Yorkshire will be looking to bounce back from Sunday’s riotous contest at Trent Bridge, where Notts pulled off the fourthhighest successful run-chase in T20 history to beat them by five wickets with five balls to spare.
The visitors made relatively comfortable work of a target of 224 on the back of a brilliant 101 from Alex Hales, with the match maintaining a trend of spiralling totals in the T20 format, with Yorkshire themselves having three times passed 220 this season.
“It’s gone up a stage in this format and people are scoring 200 consistently now,” said Yorkshire’s first team coach Andrew Gale.
“It’s pulling in the crowds and it’s great to see in terms of entertainment.
“We can’t overthink or get down about what happened on Sunday; Alex Hales played well and we didn’t bowl as well as we could have done - simple as that.
“We haven’t always started that well with the ball in T20, which is an area that we can look at, but having Liam Plunkett back in the side after injury should help, and we’ve got to move on quickly from Sunday.”