Wood throws Colly a rope but will it reach him?

posted by John Winn

If it's a Monday after Le Grand Depart then it must be the first day of a championship game at Headingley. Arriving in good time I swopped cycling stories with friends the more sharp eyed of whom had spotted that the wicket was pitched way out west. Speculation amongst Durham members had centred on whether they would see Onions and Wood back in the fold. The card showed Onions but not Wood but when the side took the field Wood was there while Onions enjoyed a cup of tea in the T20 bus shelter. *  

Patterson returned for Yorkshire who won the test absentees' stake with 3 to Durham's 1. 

 

Durham only took the field because Collingwood decided this was the better course of action: was he suspicious of a wicket so far away from the members' pavilion? Whatever his reasons he was badly let down by his bowlers before lunch. Yorkshire got off to a flier with 13 off the first over and Lyth and Lees never looked back, the latter in particular rolling out sumptuous cover drives. Switching from the experienced Rushworth Hastings combination served to no avail for the Ls were even more severe on Wood and Coughlin. Strange game at times, for last week Yorkshire couldn't make three figures against the same opposition in a T20 game, yesterday a hundred opening partnership was on the board before you could say Col de Buttertubs and I went to my baked potato at 145/0. 

Durham lunched on tongue pie and the effects were readily apparent after the break with Rushworth and Hastings serving up the kind of stuff Collingwood must have expected from them in the morning but Lyth and Lees survived, went to two hundred, then a century apiece. Two catches were spilt. First by the normally brilliant Borthwick**and then Mustard tried to repeat a trick that was successful three times against Sussex, parrying the ball to the slips but this time it went over Collingworth and Lees survived. Coughlin was the unlucky bowler. 

Finally, but not until after tea the stand was broken. Borthwick who may find himself up before the disciplinary committee of the spinners' union for he had bowled before 12:55 on the opening day, snared Lees lbw and it was 270 for 1. Deciding this was enough excitement for one day I drove home, much of it along the route followed by the peloton two days earlier, to discover by the time I reached the outskirts of Harrogate that Wood had taken four wickets in 11 balls.Some degree of normality returned by the close at 367/7, a score probably Collingwood did not have in mind when he decided to field and one Yorkshire would have settled for at the call of play. Wood may have thrown him a lifeline, but is the rope long enough? 

* technical difficulties no longer prevent us bringing you a photograph of this exciting incident

** some sources, including the Guardian, suggest the catch fell short of Borthwick. I thought this might have been the case but his body language suggested he thought he should have caught it.