CLOSE OF PLAY, DAY ONE:
Hampshire 250, Yorkshire 13-0
(Yorks 3pts, Hants 2pts)
Basingstoke ground guide:Link Weather:Link Yorkshire CC form guide (Most recent last) D L D D D
Live league table: Link Live Yorkshire averages: Link BBC Radio: Link Hants website: Link Yorkshire's all-time CC record vs Hampshire: P 157 Won 71 Tied 0 Lost 19 Drawn 67
Stats & Trivia: Hampshire's Imram Tahir played one match for Yorkshire in 2007
Next Match : August 19-22 | LVCC: Yorkshire vs. Lancashire (Leeds)
I may be wrong - and it may be a cricinfo blip - but I don't think Joe has scored for an hour or so..
I know it's important that he occupies the crease, but this sort of batting just brings more pressure on himself - and his partner. He looks much more secure and effective when he bats with a little more fluency...
So far we have had 4 excellent sessions. For the 4th or 5th time this season we have got ourselves into a winning position, lets make sure we finish it off this time!!! Please no cock-ups now, bat till tea tomorrow and give ourselves 4 sessions to bowl them out again.
Great start and congratulations to the openers on our first century stand for ages. Now go for full bonus points and a victory to give the season a boost!
This is Yorkshire`s best opening partnership of the season, surpassing the 123 put on by Rudolph and Sayers in Yorkshire`s second match of the season against Worcestershire.
In fact, this is Yorkshire`s best opening stand in their last 39 Championship matches dating back to 2007!
Again so far so good .... we've passed the follow on total without losing a wickets ... and Joe is ahead of the overs (according to a mate due to 4 overthrows but they all count). Now lets keep up the good work. Forgive me for not getting excited ... but I saw the games against Kent in 2008 & Durhamn in 2009 where we were on tip for the first 3 days .... then had to hold on at the end of the 4th
Yes, we did not cater for our "captain" conspiring to spoil the great start. Let us hope Rudolph and Gale and the middle order can build some meaningful partnerships to reach 400+
You have to feel for Tony McGrath. Not only is he a walking wicket in current form, but he`s carrying around the pressures of captaincy, a 20 match streak without a win, the increasing possibility of demotion, and his benefit season. The pressure must be unbearable.
Well he could have "walked the plank" with captaincy (maybe even MV would have been willing to take over?) and enjoyed the spoils of his benefit season. It is still my opinion that captaincy needs full time attention and not distractions of benefit activities. Even a much better player could find them incompatible.
I am not a McGrath fan - and never have been. His good scores rarely came when there was a crisis and I have always been doubtful about his county commitment. Having watched his batting over years, I think he is rather lazy with static footwork and I think he was given the captaincy "by default", not on leadership skills.
If this is unfair (others may know better), then I am sorry to be so critical.
This message has been edited by alibor on Aug 12, 2009 4:01 PM This message has been edited by alibor on Aug 12, 2009 4:01 PM
The lads are really making a hash of a great start. 4 down and into our dodgy middle order and scoring at less than 2.5 per over. Does this team have any idea as to how to exploit a winning position?
We'll be lucky to get to 275 now, when we should have been looking for 4 or 5 batting bonus points and 350 plus.
There's a point at which caution slips over into inertia. I'd like to see bresnan and Brophy play their natural games - if they get out cheaply so be it - but at least we're no worse off than if they last 50 balls and only get 3 runs. If one of them spreads the field a bit and bashes a quick 50 off 60 balls it would change the game - and shift the much-debated momentum in our favour...
Very amateurish, unprofessional online commentating today. Long pauses without commentary and Cally is constantly cutting away to provide roundups to BBC Radio. Would it be too much to have a second commentator or color man on board? I've listened to other commenataries from other counties, and there aren't long periods of dead air like this.
I am just starting to get a nasty feeling about this. We have to bat last and would not fancy our chances of getting more than 150. We need somehow to get another 200 runs at least from our "tail"
It looks like we've settled for 300 or so and 3 batting bonus points. Not a bad strategy for a team that hasn't won a CC in nearly two seasons. However, batting last we'll need a lead of at least 75-100.
a bit churlish to complain about the radio commentary. cally is working on an outground with limited facilities and is doing well to provide us with a running commentary, as well as doing local radio station reports.
---- that most of you arn't Hampshire supporters;you'd probably have topped yourselves by now.Don't you think that it is probably not an easy track to bat on and that a bit of praise is due for establishing a first innings lead with three wickets still in hand. Another 50/60 runs, although not an easy proposition could be invaluable.Come on you Tykes!
I try and be positive about Yorks ... but in the last year I've seen the team hammer Kent (at Scarborough in 2008) & Durham (at Headingley this season) for 3 days then throw it away at the start of day 4 and finally have to save the game on the last afternoon.
Lets just say we need as many runs as possible in the morning
A bit of a yawn but so far so good.
If we can bat to lunchtime and establish a lead of 100 or so then I'd hope our bowlers might be just about able to bowl Hampshire out again without leaving the batters with too much to do.
This appears to be a difficult track - we may have done better than some of us think.
I just hope the pitch doesnt flatten out and we end up dragging it out to a stale draw. I'd take an unpredictable result wicket and the chance of a win.
I'm findin it quite hard to judge how well we are (or aren't ) doing! Not helped by the fact that this must be one of the first times this season when we don't have a correspondent at the game. Obviously none of us were seduced by the thought of a few days in Basingstoke.
ANY first innings lead is to be valued - if we can get another one (or hopefully two) batting points, then I think the game is still there for us to win.
I'm just a bit worried about Tahir on the fourth afternoon - but there's nothing thus far to suggest that the pitch will start turning at this stage. I think we can only lose this game if we start panicking and the old mental frailties kick in..
Whilst I haven't gone to the game I can pass on a report of yesterday. 'Rob The Cricket Punk' is a Kent fan who posts on a 'general' cricket site. The bloke enjoys watching cricket & so goes to other games if Kent aren't playing.
Here's Rob's report of yesterday's (Wednesday) play
Nobody watches county cricket. It's just three men and a dog".
Yeah? So, how come when I arrived at May's Bounty at 10:50, I couldn't find a single vacant seat? I had to spend much of the first hour perched on the back of a park bench at deep long off; the view was pretty good but my Richard Lumb don't half ache now.
But the pain in my posterior is nothing to that which the hosts must have been feeling during the wicketless morning session. They actually bowled well and in all the right places. A couple of snicks dropped agonisingly close of the cordon and a handful of compelling lbw appeals were rejected. There just wasn't a way through the brick wall southpaw pairing of Rudolph and Sayers and it was sometimes difficult to tell who was who, so similar were they in defence. It was Rudolph's flawless punishing of the rare bad ball that set them apart; he seemed to receive far more of those than his partner but, then, good players always do, don't they? He's rapidly becoming one of my 'lucky' batsmen: last year, he made excellent hundreds in both games against Kent and, today, he fell ten short of another.
Gale came in and immediately unleashed two spanking boundaries that looked and sounded like they'd come from Thor's hammer. The edge that caused his downfall was speeding at a similar rate but Dawson made the second of his two difficult slip catches look relatively easy. Bairstow was a little scratchy but Brophy's intentions were clear from the moment he unfurled a perfect square drive to get off the mark. Just as he was getting into his stride after tea, I realised I had to depart. I was in two minds whether to hang about for Rudolph's ton but decided against it. He must have got out just a few balls later...perhaps he saw his lucky spectator heading off down Bounty Road and lost his nerve?
Young Griffiths, at skiddy fast-medium was the pick of the Hants attack and deserved his double strike of Sayers and McGrath. Tremlett was occasionally wayward, sometimes dangerous and I'm convinced he's one of those bowlers that just plain ain't lucky. Tahir, I thought, was grossly underbowled during the first half of the day - when he was finally permitted a spell, he found a bit of bounce and started to make things happen. I'd have thought a few overs of Dawson's slow lefties might have been worth a punt.
The pitch is clearly not the damp destructive monster of last year but, nevertheless, I can't see runscoring becoming a doddle as the match progresses. A 50 run lead might be very handy indeed.
This message has been edited by dpressed on Aug 13, 2009 10:04 AM
