There is something of the Black Knight in this Yorkshire team. Vital limbs have been hacked off but they are still out there battling away optimistically. Whether or not their championship title hopes remain alive however, the third day of what is proving an absorbing finale to the season will show.
Events at Taunton, which, barring flood,plague or pestilence will surely culminate in a Somerset victory against Nottinghamshire, mean that even to stand an outside chance of sneaking home at the head of the pile they will need to score a minimum of 350 in their first innings and then go on to win the game.
It is an unlikely scenario. Yorkshire will start the third day on 235 for six, which leaves the prospect of that target looking remote. The batting order always did have the look of a fat rat about it, with a big body and a long tail, and although Tim Bresnan, the redoubtably honest “Bresilad”, in at No5 and effectively facing the new ball (an unaccustomed role, one would have thought, unless it was the second one), was still there on 72, with Azeem Rafiq on 20, there is that second new ball looming in 11 overs, which could scupper the rest of the innings, leaving the game in limbo.
Middlesex might struggle to get sufficient runs while leaving themselves time to bowl Yorkshire out a second time on an unhelpful pitch. Unless they are bowled out in their second innings, a tantalising target might have to do, but even with second-place money at stake, the draw must be favourite now and with it Somerset’s title.
Until Bresnan and Andy Hodd came together and forged a fifth-wicket partnership of 116, it all looked a forlorn hope for Yorkshire, with Middlesex themselves seemingly on a charge to the title. After Middlesex had been dismissed in the morning for 270, a compelling new-ball spell from Toby Roland-Jones saw Alex Lees, Gary Ballance and the beleaguered captain Andrew Gale all dismissed without scoring while Adam Lyth appeared to be playing in a different match at the other end. When Steve Finn then dismissed Lyth, the board read 53 for four, the Middlesex team was buzzing and the innings was in tatters.
Bresnan, though, once a bowler who batted a bit, has reinvented himself as the reverse. He might have been perilously close to being lbw first ball but thereafter played with considerable aplomb for a further 172 balls, hitting seven fours.
Hodd offered a contrast, a chunky busy cutter and carver as wicketkeeper-batsmen tend to be. He it was who first seized the initiative away from Middlesex, who may have been wondering whether they might come to regret the chance he offered to Nick Compton at third slip off Finn. He had made 22 of Yorkshire’s 87 at the time, and, if Finn was generating some real pace, so that the ball flew rapidly, it did so in relatively straightforward fashion. Nick Gubbins, it might be noted, was dropped by Yorkshire on the same score: cricketers do not like omens.
It took concerted effort from Roland-Jones to break the stand. With the brooding cloud of the first day gone to be replaced by warm autumn sun, the crowd basked and the pitch started to look its age. If the new ball had gone through reasonably well, then now there was no swing, no seam, and barely a hint of reverse swing, although even that was not enough to be disconcerting.
Roland-Jones had switched to bowling two lengths to Hodd, short to try and drive him back in the crease and then full once he had done so. Bouncers went past his head, and one so unbalanced him that it sat him on his backside. Finally the bowler pitched one right up, Hodd missed and the umpire sent him on his way.
The start of the Yorkshire innings was little short of catastrophic. While Lyth drove with absolute certainty anything pitched up, Lees faced 17 balls without opening his account before he played a full delivery onto his stumps.
Four overs later, and both Ballance and Gale had been smartly taken by the bucket hands of Ollie Rayner at second slip. Lyth meanwhile was making his way happily to 43 but having hit his ninth boundary somehow contrived to deflect a ball from Finn, in his first over, onto his stumps.
Middlesex were able to advance their overnight 202 for five only by a further 68 runs, with the eventual loss of Gubbins for 125 and James Franklin for 48. Jack Brooks was able to gain reward for his enthusiastic persistence by cleaning up the innings to finish with six for 65, the best figures of his career and well earned too.
