Brooks Clinches Impressive Innings Triumph

New recruit Jack Brooks ran through Derbyshire's middle order and tail like the proverbial steamroller to seal a magnificent win against Derbyshire. His fourth day afternoon heroics almost eclipsed the batting masterclass delivered in the previous three days by Derbyshire's Chesney Hughes and Yorkshire's dynamic duo of Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow.

To be fair to Brooks, he did actually bowl well [or at least very economically] in the first innings, but his efforts would have passed under the radar, on account of Mr Chesney Hughes hitting the Yorkshire attack to all corners of Headingley, whilst amassing the small matter of 270 runs! However, if the wickets deserted young Jack on Monday, they came along like London buses on Thursday afternoon, and frankly speaking just in the nick of time. Were it not for the avalanche of Derbyshire wickets either side of tea, then our neighbours would probably have coasted to a draw, but Brooks, Plunkett, and Rashid set about Derbyshire's seemingly fragile batting order.

There we have it. Several England Lions past and present helped Yorkshire to its second extraordinary win of the week. We cannot leave this update without paying tribute to Joe Root who accumulated his largest-ever first-class score of 236 while Jonny Bairstow weighed in with 186 runs of his own. In so doing, Yorkshire declared just short of seven hundred runs, a total which the white rose has failed to record since the nineteenth century, or so I have read. [Is this true?!] Well, it is heartening that the Tykes have such record-breakers in our midst. It is just a pity that one or two of our ranks will soon be vacating their county in favour of the exalted arena of test cricket. Let us hope that Andrew Gale remembers how to bat real soon or else our two back-to-back wins may prove to be as good as it gets in this highly competitive County Championship campaign. On the other hand, here's hoping that Yorkshire could make further history by becoming the first [or one of the first] counties [or teams anywhere] who went on to win their league after suffering an innings reverse in their first fixture. How weird would that be?! 

YORKSHIRE v Derbyshire; 29th April - 2nd May; at Headingley; Yorkshire won the toss

Derbyshire first innings: 475 [Hughes 270*, Madsen 93; Rashid 3-122]

Yorkshire first innings: 677 for 7 declared [Root 236, Bairstow 186, Lyth 69, Ballance 53]

Derbyshire second innings: 163 [Madsen 52, Durston 50; Brooks 5-40]  

YORKSHIRE WIN BY AN INNINGS AND 39 RUNS; YORKSHIRE 21 points; Derbyshire 5 points