There has been an inexorable quality to Yorkshire’s cricket this summer. For all that they were inconsistent in the opening weeks of the season, their performances still suggested strongly that when they hit their best form, there would be no better four-day side in the land.
This view has been confirmed in the past couple of months or so. Yorkshire’s 183-run victory over Durham at Scarborough on Sunday was their sixth successive County Championship win and it left Andrew Gale’s team 50 points ahead of their nearest rivals, Warwickshire. The title is surely returning to Headingley, although we may have to wait until September for the pennant to be brandished, the players to spray the champagne and Dickie Bird to stand on his balcony and weep his joyful tears.
Yorkshire’s defeat of Durham had always seemed likely since Glenn Maxwell and Adil Rashid took the match and wrenched it into a shape of their own devising with their remarkable 248-run partnership on Saturday afternoon. That stand left Yorkshire with a lead of 446 going into Sunday’s play, and by the time Durham began their hopeful pursuit, only the record books were suggesting it could be done.
As it turned out, many of Durham’s batsmen battled bravely against the serious pace of Liam Plunkett and the leg spin of Rashid, both of whom profited from being able to bowl on a wicket offering bounce and carry. Plunkett took three of the first four wickets to fall with the undoubted highlight being Maxwell’s one-handed diving catch at third slip to remove Scott Borthwick for 31. The England fast bowler followed that with a bouncer that Gordon Muchall could only fend to the wicketkeeper Andrew Hodd to leave the visitors struggling on 143-4
Although Michael Richardson and Jack Burnham added 53 for the fifth wicket, there was a sense that Yorkshire’s victory was being postponed rather than seriously frustrated. So it proved.
Rashid removed three of the last five batsmen, and one or two of whom seemed glad to get away. Indeed, no one showed more resolution than 18-year-old Burnham, who was making his first-class debut. He was bowled for nought in the first innings but of the eight batsmen to reach double figures, only he managed a half-century. Three of the rest managed useful 30s and Durham’s players know well that pretty 30s rarely win you matches and never win you titles.
Burnham was the last man out when he skied Plunkett to Gale at mid-on. That left Plunkett with figures of four for 61 and it also completed Yorkshire’s first ever double over Durham, a feat that their coach, Jason Gillespie, acknowledged had seemed unlikely when the home side had been 95for nine on the first day. “That was a fantastic performance and I’m still shaking,” he said. “I’m just delighted to be standing here on the back of a win but we have to be completely honest and say that our top five still need to step up.”
