Ballance's batting heroics slays the Unicorns

Whilst Yorkshire's summer travails have veered from the high-flying County Championship campaign to the rotten one-day under-achieving, there has been one constant: the batting brilliance of Gary Ballance. Today GB smashed a big century that paved the way for a rare limited-overs success for the Tykes.

Although this afternoon's encounter with fellow-strugglers, the Unicorns, was scarcely anything more than a contractual obligation, both teams contrived to produce a bonanza of runs and wickets in an entertaining basement battle in Leeds.

Batting first, the hosts recovered from early wickets as Ballance and our latest prodigy Alex Lees celebrated their England Lions call-up with a ton and a half-century respectively as Yorkshire belatedly discovered the art of posting a decent one-day total. Their fellow-England Lion, Liam Plunkett also weighed in with a fine late innings knock plus a couple of wickets.

Although Yorkshire's 266 was always liable to be a mountain too high for the mediocre Unicorns, the visitors produced a spirited run chase, assisted in no small way by a century for Matthew Lineker! In the end, the away team came up a little short as Jack Leaning helped himself to a career best of five wickets for twenty-two runs from his four overs!

Yorkshire can draw some semblance of satisfaction from this win. The person who made it happen was the red-hot Ballance. With England's batsmen misfiring against the Australians, it is a matter of time before the quality and consistency of Ballance merits a call-up.

YORKSHIRE versus The Unicorns; at Headingley; Tuesday 13th August 2013; The Unicorns won the toss.

YORKSHIRE: 266 for 6 (40 overs)

Gale c Lineker b Reed 6 (10-1)

Hodgson c Parsons b Skidmore 9 (15-2)

Lees lbw b Park 63 (150-3)

Ballance c Park b Beaven 139 (261-6)

Lyth b Park 14 (182-4)

Leaning b Norman 1 (185-5)

Plunkett not out 25

Pyrah not out 4

Extras: 5

THE UNICORNS: 234 (38.2 overs)

Lancefield c Hodgson b Plunkett 39 (77-1)

Lineker lbw b Leaning 107 (202-5)

O'Shea c Robinson b Coad 7 (116-2)

Park c Hodgson b Ashraf 6 (147-3)

Hill c Coad b Plunkett 17 (175-4)

Parsons c Hodgson b Leaning 31 (221-6)

Norman c Plunkett b Leaning 4 (232-8)

Beaven b Leaning 8 (229-7)

Reed c Ashraf b Leaning 2 (232-9)

Skidmore not out 0

Poysden b Ashraf 2 (234)

Extras: 11

Extras:

Leaning 5-22

YORKSHIRE win by 32 runs.