Kirby is No Fun - Yorks Day 2 and 3

Cherries!!
By Grockle
June 29 2003

With Nixon McLean incapacitated and the rest of our bowling attack pretty ineffective it's an uphill struggle in this one. Yorkshire Wood's 207 didn't help much!!

It does become dispiriting trying to find positive things to say about a side so deeply in trouble in a game. Losing the toss didn't help, losing bucketsfull of wickets to the visiting psycho...SP Kirby didn't help - what the hell is this guy on? He sledges and intimidates whenever a batsman hits his poor balls for fours - didn't impress Peter Bowler too much! Couple this with allowing the Yorkshire batting line-up to get away from us, almost from the start with a 165 opening partnership between Wood and Fleming.

McLean took wickets but then it seems he took some cherries from someone in the crowd and was out mmost of the third day with stomach upsets - was he nobbled? No the cherries came from one of ours - and they probably weren't the reason - it seems he'd been unhappy the day before.

Yorkshire found themselves at 409 at the end of the second day after batting all the way through it and losing 6 wickets for their troubles. Wood took us for a double hundred and Fleming fell 2 short of another one but other than Gray at number 8, no-one else looked like much.

On Day 3 the visitors added 103 by the lunch interval and looked in little trouble until they reached the high 470's. Wood did finally go at 413 but it wasn't until Jones bowled Silverwood and then Blackwell and Francis cleared out Sidebottom and Gray ( who managed a measly 104!! Adding 60 to his overnight total at number 8 for heavens sake!!) that the innings finally closed.

We batted out the session until lunch for 11 and then returned after lunch so that Wood could go to the first ball that he faced! 11 for 1 - deja-vu again! Bowler and Bryant played sensibly - no heroics, bat for the long haul - laugh at Kirby's antics and hit his bad balls for fours!

Bowler added a solid 58 before he went - we needed more from him but everything else was OK until tea in fact, Cox looked solid and Bryant looked like he was on for something big - it was his kind of game, slow and methodical.

In they come for tea, out they go again and Bryant loses the plot and swats the second ball of the last session to Fleming - why try and smash the thing when you're expecting to bat for four sessions? Who the hell knows.

Yorkshire are up for it again after we'd ground them down over the afternoon. Burns puts up resistance with Cox and they add 63 before Kirby gets the captain caught by White. It looks like Cox doesn't want to be left out and four runs later he collects his second LBW of the match to the mad redhead. 194 for 5, needed 237 to make them bat again and the whole of tomorrow to survive if we can't post a total in excess of 400.

Blackwell and Turner have a lot to do, but Noddy did it once - he doesn't do it again as he goes for 4 at 210 for 6.

Can we make a game of this? It depends solely on the mentality that Blackie comes out with tomorrow. IF he takes his time and IF the bowlers can pull us out of the fire again with the kind of knocks they provided in the first innings, then we could post something for them to chase. Will Nixon bat? Doubt it, but it is whether he can bowl that could have an influence on this game.

Blackwell is there on 13, Laraman is with him on 4. We have, at best Jones and Francis - Nixon is an added extra only. We are 24 runs behind - think that this one is beyond us. Unless of course someone wants to get into Headingley 81 mode...unlikely!