What a difference a couple of days make.
After Yorkshire celebrated one of their best ever victories in the LV= County Championship over Dur-ham at the Riverside on Saturday, they were brought back down to earth by Derbyshire at Headingley today.
Left-handed opener Chesney Hughes dominated the first day of this clash between last season’s promoted counties with a brilliant career-best 171 not out to help his side post 302-4 from 93 overs after being invited to bat.
He and captain Wayne Madsen, who played second fiddle with 93, shared a second-wicket stand of 258 inside 69 overs, falling just two short of recording the highest total for that wicket in first-class matches involving Yorkshire at Headingley.
Yorkshire at least enjoyed success in the evening session to loosen Derbyshire’s grip as Steve Patterson, Adil Rashid and Liam Plunkett struck to take the score from 268-1 to 279-4.
There was a marked difference between Hughes’s 282-ball knock with 25 fours and three sixes and Madsen’s effort, with the former playing with power and the latter happy to be more conservative on a pitch which was expected to be livelier.
The white rose side went wicketless between the seventh and 75th overs, although Jack Brooks and Patterson were miserly.
The closest they came to a wicket was when Hughes edged Tim Bresnan behind on 70, where Jonny Bairstow dropped a difficult catch.
All of Derbyshire’s wickets were either caught in the slips or in the gully, with Bresnan taking the first early on this morning after a rain-delayed start by 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, Joe Root and Bairstow have been named in the England Lions team for next Thursday’s four-day clash with New Zealand at Leicester. Root will captain the side and both will both miss the Championship match against Somerset.
* Historian and author Mick Pope launches his new book ‘Headingley Ghosts’ – to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Yorkshire cricket – in the East Stand Long Room at Headingley tomorrow (10.30am).
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