Yorkshire took the unprecedented step of overlooking not one but two overseas players for their latest County Championship match – but their decision could yet have serious repercussions.
Although there have been several cases of imports missing out on selection in domestic cricket, most notably when Lancashire omitted Steve Elworthy for two Lord’s finals appearances in 1996, the county champions are in the luxurious position of having the Australian World Cup-winning pair, Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell, on their current playing staff. However, they opted to keep faith with their homegrown top six for the visit of Nottinghamshire.
So while Maxwell, who featured in the previous two Championship matches, was dispatched to the south coast for some recuperation after a non-stop start to 2015, Finch took his place in the Second XI Championship against Worcestershire. He started but will not finish the contest at Barnt Green. Having mistimed a pull on 19 off Chris Russell, the 28-year-old retired hurt, spent the afternoon having his ribs scanned and X-rayed in a Redditch hospital and returned to Leeds in early evening prior to receiving the results.
With only 41 runs in three NatWest T20 Blast innings since recovering from the hamstring tear he incurred at the Indian Premier League on 14 April, Finch had been asked by Yorkshire to rediscover some red-ball form before next week’s top-of-the-table clash with the 2013 champions Durham, when Adam Lyth and Gary Ballance will be absent due to the pre-Ashes training camp in Spain. Their plans to slip him into the top order for that contest are now in jeopardy.
One man who will return to the scene of his weekend heroics is Jonny Bairstow. England’s most contemporary match-winner is scheduled to join this contest on the third morning too, having been nominated before the toss to replace Andrew Hodd behind the stumps.
It could be well advanced by that point. Nottinghamshire’s first innings dribbled into Tuesday by virtue only of rain and bad light wiping out half the opening day’s 96-over allocation. How they could do with the Sheffield-born teenager Luke Wood reproducing some of the rambunctious strokeplay that yielded a recent hundred against Sussex. Wood and Stuart Broad, making a first Championship appearance in 12 months, counter-punched on a gloomy evening punctuated by multiple stoppages but were separated when a snorter from Tim Bresnan took Broad’s edge and was pouched comfortably at third slip by Jack Leaning.
Had Leaning held on to a difficult chance in the same position when Broad had a single to his name, off the metronomic Steven Patterson, Nottinghamshire would have been deeper in the mire.
It was certainly a good toss for Andrew Gale to win. Yorkshire’s policy has been to leave more grass on their pitches in Leeds this summer and the greater bounce and carry certainly suits their disciplined pace attack. So, too, did the overhead conditions that prevailed here.
Patterson, whose devotion to dots drives batsmen dotty, made the initial breakthrough after 55 minutes of Nottinghamshire resistance when the shoulder of Brendan Taylor’s bat looped the ball to first slip. Michael Lumb and James Taylor followed to make it three wickets in 22 deliveries, and Ryan Sidebottom celebrated his return from a two-month absence to a calf injury by ending Steven Mullaney’s vigil on his return from the Football Stand End.
Any thoughts of a post-lunch fightback were deconstructed by two full Jack Brooks deliveries accounting for Samit Patel and Will Gidman, and Sidebottom striking at the start of a spell for a second time when extra bounce accounted for Riki Wessels.
“There was a bit of help from the pitch and the overhead conditions but you’ve still got to put it in the right place,” was the assessment of Yorkshire’s director of cricket, Martyn Moxon.
