From a selfish perspective Stuart Broad gained just about everything he would have wanted out of his first County Championship appearance in 12 months.
Unfortunately the polar opposite was true for the rest of his Nottinghamshire colleagues for whom the contest reaped virtually nothing and leaves them languishing at the foot of Division One. While Broad will no doubt feel topped up for the Ashes, those he will leave behind have bottomed out with their director of cricket, Mick Newell, acknowledging they are in a relegation fight.
Broad celebrated his 29th birthday by replicating some of his new-ball menace of 24 hours earlier to remove the overnight centurions Andrew Gale and Jack Leaning inside his first three overs from the Kirkstall Lane end, then mopped up the tail either side of lunch to transform his overnight return of two for 55 into seven for 84, the fourth-best figures of his career.
He claimed seven match wickets on his previous first-class outing – also a defeat here, by New Zealand a little over three weeks ago – and this workout was primarily with international cricket in mind. As if to emphasise it, Notts’ captain, James Taylor, capped his spells at four overs on day two.
Not that even the staunchest critic of the stage-managing of county cricket could complain: Broad has turned out only 16 times in the Championship in eight years but this was his fourth five-for and no one sent down as many overs as his 26.4 here.
“He’s playing for Notts to get ready for the Ashes, that is a fact. It is a bit of a workout and he put a tremendous amount of effort in,” said Newell, who is also an England selector.
“I have been really impressed. Not necessarily with his pace but with the skill that he bowled, the way he swung the ball, the way he seamed it. There have been good signs for him and if he cranks that up an extra four or five miles an hour in the Test matches, which will obviously be his intention, then, if there is assistance in the pitches during the Ashes Test matches, in Broad and James Anderson we have got a very good chance of exploiting that.”
Another England bowler, albeit one of yesteryear, Ryan Sidebottom, proved just as crafty, however, to plunge his former county towards a humiliating three-day defeat: Brendan Taylor was gobbled up at gully, Steven Mullaney flashed behind inside the first quarter-hour of the innings.
It set the tone. Millionaire’s shots were unsurprisingly coupled with paupers’ scores. Newell agreed: “In the second innings we displayed a lack of good technique. We had people nicking wide balls and missing straight balls. That’s page one of the MCC coaching manual. TThere is a lot of work to do to be better than that.”
The only area in which Notts edged Yorkshire was in the number of internationals they fielded. But that 6-5 win did not prevent them slipping to ninth and into a survival shoot-out with Sussex, Worcestershire and Hampshire according to Newell. “I would have thought that relegation places will be taken by two of those four teams and we have to be one of the two that gets out of it,” he said.
Sidebottom, 37 and in only his second appearance of the season due to a two-month calf injury lay-off, plunged the visitors to 126 for eight shortly after tea, abetted by a stunning first-slip grab by Alex Lees to send back Samit Patel and the teenager Luke Wood playing down the wrong line.
Broad’s 42-ball 50, full of typically muscular blows, simply delayed Yorkshire’s first full-points victory of their title defence. But they left the field before 5.30pm nine points behind the leaders, Durham, with a game in hand. The pair meet at Chester-le-Street from Sunday and the Australian import Aaron Finch will cover the loss of the England batsmen, Adam Lyth and Gary Ballance, after being declared fit following his rib injury scare.
“To be in this position approaching the halfway stage of the season is incredibly satisfying,” said the Yorkshire coach, Jason Gillespie.
