There was little to separate the top two teams from last season’s County Championship on the field – although the same could not be said of their views off it.
For the champions, Yorkshire, soreness at being batted out of victory range; for Warwickshire satisfaction at edging the points scoring (11 to nine). It was a distinct improvement for them. The closest club among the 2014 field they may have been but they were marmalised by an innings twice by this particular opposition.
“We knew Warwickshire’s game. It was going to be a safety-first attitude. The way they batted at the end of day three showed us clearly the way they want to play. I am not having a go at their methods because it has been successful for them but it’s not the way we would want to play,” said the Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie.
Yorkshire’s frustration was partly of their own making, having conceded a 132-run lead on first innings. For the third time in as many matches they were slow out of the blocks on the first day and Warwickshire are too canny a side to grant a head start. “It was a pretty good wicket and both sides found it difficult to force the pace of the game. There was a bit of a carrot dangled and it turned out to be an interesting fourth session,” the Warwickshire captain Varun Chopra said.
The elements did not help. Two morning stoppages – the first for rain, the second for hail – reduced the day’s over allocation by eight. Had Chopra opted for a declaration when play resumed at 1.10pm after an early lunch, Yorkshire’s victory equation would have been 303 off 76 overs.
Taking a more cautious route eradicated any realistic possibility of a title rival pilfering some early-season momentum via a 16-point winning haul, but it also reduced their own window of opportunity. Astonishingly it did provide Ian Westwood with a chance to become the first batsman to register hundreds in both innings of a first-class match at Headingley but after resuming on 83, he managed only a single before succumbing to gun-for-hire James Middlebrook’s off-spin.
Middlebrook mopped up during the slog, and in so doing became the first spinner to take a five-wicket haul in the County Championship this season, a fortnight shy of his 38th birthday – a statistic that spoke as much about the paucity of slow bowling on the domestic scene as his nous under pressure.
Armed with a 351-run buffer, the baton at the Kirkstall Lane end was passed to Jeetan Patel, arguably the best exponent of the art on the circuit and a most worthy current Wisden cricketer of the year. His snaring of Cheteshwar Pujara and Andrew Gale during a spell of three for 22 immediately after tea offered brief hope for Warwickshire but it was snuffed out when he was defied a fourth victim by Chopra’s parrying of a sharp chance at short leg from a Jack Leaning inside edge.
