With Derbyshire having taken up residence in the second division, this match is the first meeting between these two counties in first-class cricket since 2013. That game featured a remarkable turn-around and Paul Dyson looks back over it.
April 29, 30, May 1, 2, 2013: Derbyshire 475 (CF Hughes 270*, WL Madsen 93) & 163 (WL Madsen 52, WJ Durston 50, JA Brooks 5-40); Yorkshire 677-7dec (JE Root 236, JM Bairstow 186, A Lyth 69, GS Ballance 53). Yorkshire won by an innings and 39 runs.
Both Yorkshire and Derbyshire had been promoted back into the County Championship’s first division for the 2013 season and so this was their first game together in the top tier since the first season of two divisions in 2000. Yorkshire had played two games thus far, winning one and losing the other; Derbyshire’s three matches had produced three different results.
Yorkshire won the toss, asked Derbyshire to bat, had an early breakthrough but then must have regretted their decision through the rest of the day. A 258-run stand for the second wicket between opener Chesney Hughes and skipper Wayne Madsen set them on their way to a big total but the latter fell seven runs short of a century and three wickets, including that of West Indian Shiv Chanderpaul, then fell for just 11 runs, two of them to catches by Adam Lyth. By close of play the visitors had reached 302 for four; Hughes had batted throughout the day and was unbeaten on 171.
A wicket fell at the start of day two before Derbyshire had added to their overnight total and this brought former Yorkshire player David Wainwright, now in his second season with Derbyshire, to the crease. Although he scored only 18, he shared in a stand of 81 and saw Hughes past his 200-mark. Wicket-keeper Tom Poynton made a similar contribution and the visitors were eventually all out for 475. Hughes, after slightly over nine hours at the crease, had carried his bat for 270, having struck 40 fours and three sixes. It was the highest innings ever made against Yorkshire in Yorkshire for any county, Derbyshire’s second-highest in its entire history and the highest by a batsman carrying his bat in all first-class cricket for 78 years. His batting was marked by him exhibiting high powers of concentration interspersed with ‘full-blooded strokes of breath-taking quality’ (Wisden) especially his ‘scintillating cover drives’ (Yorkshire CCC Yearbook). For the record, Adil Rashid was the only Yorkshire bowler to take more than two wickets; he finished with three for 122, Tim Bresnan also conceding over 100 runs. The home side then began positively with an enterprising opening stand of 126 between Lyth and Joe Root. The former departed before close of play when the total stood at 164 for one.
