As the scoreboard was trying to catch up in the last over of the Roses Blast game on Friday night, it felt like the longest few minutes of my career following my mishap in the field when I didn’t get inside the ring and conceded a no ball with Lockie Ferguson bowling a couple of overs earlier.
It’s probably the quickest I’ve ever run once I realised I should have been at short fine-leg instead of back on the fence.
I thought I got inside the ring when he bowled it, but it was my own fault.
I was thinking about my next over, where I was going to bowl and what field I would have. Because we were fine-leg up to Steven Croft and back to Rob Jones, it was nearly every ball I was swapping. I just wasn’t switched on properly.
Thankfully we got the win in the end and moved closer to quarter-final qualification.
After the game at Birmingham a couple of nights before, it shows where you are as a side to bounce back like we did.
The stature of the game against Lancashire, it means even more.
Not only did it almost get us there in terms of qualification, it put them on the back foot. It was a big thing for us.
We were all buzzing in the dressing room afterwards, but it’s been like that every game to be honest.
Also, one of the biggest positives of the campaign so far is that we haven’t overthought our losses.
When we’ve lost at Leicester and Birmingham, we haven’t really gone into it in too much detail.
It’s been a case of, ‘We didn’t play very well, but we can bounce back’ because we are full of confidence and know what we’re doing with roles and stuff.
We haven’t made any excuses about lads being injured or going to England, and the lads who have come in have just slotted into those positions.
We haven’t tried to move anyone as we would have done in previous years.
Watch highlights of the thrilling game at Emerald Headingley last night ???? #OneRose https://t.co/fGyZV0e6Rd
— Yorkshire CCC (@YorkshireCCC) July 3, 2021
For example, Harry Brook could have easily gone up the order. But we left him where he’s been doing really well. That has paid dividends.
We’ve tried to keep the core of the team the same and have everyone else fit in around it.
That’s helped keep the consistency and is a good blueprint for years to come.
It may be that we qualify for the quarter-finals with the 15 points we have already. But we don’t want to take any chances and want to keep winning.
What Dave Willey has asked of us is to try and learn from every game whether we win or lose.
So we’ll keep looking at it like that. If we keep thinking how we have been, I know we won’t lose all three. I’m so confident about that. I can see us winning two out of three or even all three.
Brooky has been absolutely outstanding over the last month. He’s been unbelievable in the middle order – probably the toughest position to bat in T20 cricket
You have all the fielders out, and he’s had to pace his innings. He’s done it remarkably well. Even in red ball, he’s been really consistent and played that match-winning innings against Northamptonshire this week.
I’m really proud of him because he’s had a lot of, ‘He’s a player with all the talent, but he’s yet to prove it consistently’.
He wasn’t averaging as much as he’d like in the red ball stuff at the start of the year.
It could have easily put more pressure on him, but he’s matured and come of age now.
In T20, he’s shown he is thinking about his game so well. He’s just playing low risk cricket.
No wonder his average is more than a hundred when he’s just playing himself in for his first 20 or 30 balls and then smacking it at the end!
It is just white ball cricket for myself and Matthew Waite at the moment following our injuries earlier in the season.
We haven’t had time to build up our overs for the Championship, so Galey has just said, ‘Concentrate on the white ball and give us some extra energy in the T20s’.
It’s the busiest part of the season with red and white ball. The lads who play both hardly have any days off. So it’s about the lads who haven’t been playing in the Championship bringing the energy to those who have.
I’ll then concentrate on the Hundred with the Superchargers, the quarter-finals of the Blast – fingers crossed – and then be in contention for the last four Championship games once I’ve got my workloads up.
