CRICKET DURING THE RAIN

By Brian Sanderson,

Whilst John was doing his household chores I walked to the ground for the third day of the Championship match.It was rain walking to the ground and the start was delayed  by fifteen minutes. The rain did not stop the players playing football.

Yorkshire need to take wickets quickly which they did in the first hour. Derby were 42 for 4 at one stage with the help of three good catches by Hodd,the on loan keeper from Sussex.However Dunstan who had taken career bst bowling figures yesterday also started to make  runs easily especially from Patterson.

After lunch Whiteley who is Sheffield boy and Dunstan who is a Somerset boy put together a stand of 112 before Rafiq got a wicket.The dark clouds were arriving with the Derby supporters saying it was to dark to bat.None of the batsmen were in any physical danger and were batting well.As predicted by the weather forecast it started raining just before 3.00 and thoughts of no further play was in the minds of a lot of supporters.

But at 5 o,clock the match restarted with a minimum of 25 overs.David Wainwright mother and father were sitting near me and every scoring shot was clapped.Bresnan gave them a wave from the field.He bowled 23 overs to-day but only collected one wicket.Nobody could understand why he bowled twice as many overs than Sidebottom who took three wickets.Another mystery of Yorkshire cricket.

At the end of the day Wainwright was still not out with 45 and Derbyshire are 233 for 8.It seems the match is heading for a draw unless   Yorkshire produce some excellent cricket which would make a good day.We will see if this does happen  if not theire is plenty of league cricket in the area.