Bath, Bristol (IAG), Wells and Weston-super-Mare have all hosted Yorkshire on their visits to Somerset but 67 of the county’s 90 first-class matches in their westernmost regular area have been to Taunton, as is this year’s. However, Paul Dyson looks back at a game this century which gave Yorkshire a salutary lesson.
May 17, 18, 19, 20, 2010 at Taunton: Yorkshire 405 (A Lyth 142, A McGrath 73, JJ Sayers 50, BJ Phillips 4-76) & 333-4dec (A Lyth 93, A McGrath 83, JA Rudolph 66); Somerset 377 (AV Suppiah 99, JC Buttler 52, AU Rashid 4-85) & 364-4 (JC Hildreth 102*, Z de Bruyn 93, NRD Compton 65, ME Trescothick 53). Somerset won by six wickets.
In 2009 in the equivalent fixture, Yorkshire challenged Somerset to score 479 to win on Taunton’s ‘notoriously flat pitch’ (Wisden). Somerset won by four wickets to achieve the second-highest fourth innins total in Championship history. So one year later Yorkshire challenged the same county, on the same ground, to see if they could score 113 runs fewer. The consequence would be obvious even though the spectators would witness a feast of 1,779 runs – an average of 444.75 runs per day.
