Ali Maiden has been reflecting on Yorkshire’s Royal London Cup defeat against Lancashire at York today, where the county fell short with the bat on the way to a first defeat in Group B.
Lancashire comfortably chased a 225 target, winning by seven wickets with nine overs to spare.
A used pitch, yes. However, the Vikings should have posted more than the 224 all out they did, with nine batters reaching double figures and only Will Fraine (41) reaching 40.
“It’s disappointing because of how well we played the other day. You want to follow that up,” said the county’s assistant coach, who is leading the team in this competition.
“You look around the houses, and ultimately we played some poor cricket shots through the middle of our innings. We had a good powerplay at the start, and then a lot of batters were out playing across the line instead of hitting down the ground.
“We were well under par. We’ve spoken in the dressing room, and what we’d like to see is building partnerships through the middle of the innings.
“The powerplay was good, and I don’t think it was us trying to score too quickly for the pitch. It was just losing wickets in the middle through poor batting.
“Maybe that’s through inexperience, and Lancashire probably bowled better than any team has on that wicket so far.”
On the pitch, used for Tuesday’s clash with Northamptonshire when both teams topped 300 in a Yorkshire win, Maiden said: “It was slightly different.
“It was a bit slower, and it spun. It spun on Tuesday, but had Lancashire fulfilled their overs they’d have scored 300 easily. So I don’t think it was that much different.”
On the positives from this second round fixture, Maiden added: “We could have been 160 all out in 35 overs, so for Coady and Lotes to put that partnership together showed huge character.
“For a young team, that’s a big positive. We got to a score, and you never know in this game.
“All I said to the lads at the half-time was, ‘If we walk off this pitch spent, having put all our effort into it, that’s all we can ask’. And they put in a huge amount of effort.
“Unfortunately, Lancashire didn’t need to take too many risks in their chase.”
That was proved by the fact they could play out the dangerous Ben Coad (1-19 from 10 overs) and score their runs elsewhere.
