Picture courtesy of Noah Kelly, who celebrates a YPL North century century for Driffield Town against champions Clifton Alliance on Saturday.
By Noah Kelly
On the whole, as a team, I’m pretty pleased with how we’ve started this summer as a second-team.
We know how hard wins in red-ball cricket are to find. So to get three against Warwickshire away, Lancashire at Headingley and Durham at Scarborough, and also to dominate Lancashire again at Northern, it’s been very rewarding for us as a group.
In that draw at Northern, I have no doubt that we’d have got another victory had it been a four-day game.
I’m very proud to have been asked to captain the side at the start of the season. It’s a good development thing for me, and I’m learning a lot about myself as well as my team-mates.
It’s been an interesting challenge given our team is made up of a mix of senior players and Under 18s.
In the last few weeks, we’ve had the luxury of Matt Milnes coming back from injury. He looks in phenomenal rhythm at the moment, but he’s only been allowed to bowl a certain amount of overs per innings. So it’s been about managing that alongside some of the young Academy lads, whose bodies are still getting used to bowling long spells.
The captaincy is something which will definitely help my own game in a number of different ways.
I obviously know a lot more about the art of batting and wicketkeeping, so talking to bowlers about plans and how they get into rhythm and trying to be empathetic to their needs has been something I’ve enjoyed getting to grips with.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Noah has been captaining Yorkshire’s second ream and opening the batting.
I got out on 95 in the game at Northern. They brought the field up, and it created that bit of pressure, forcing me to play a false shot against the off-spin of Harry Singh and I was caught at slip.
But in chats afterwards with Tom Smith and the rest of the coaching staff, we spun that around and was like, ‘If you’re the opposition captain, would you have done the same?’
The answer was, ‘Probably, yeah’. So now that obviously works in my favour. It’s something to bear in mind when I’m in that situation again.
Tom has been a massive help to me with the captaincy. He’s captained in county cricket before, he was an all-rounder, and he knows the game as well as anyone. I’m very lucky to have someone there with such a wealth of knowledge.
With Fin Bean in the side for that game, I batted in the middle order. But for the majority of time in the seconds this season, I’ve been opening the batting.
It’s been a mutual decision between Tom and myself to go down route this year. I’ve opened the batting before but not consistently at this level.
I’ve had a lot of starts up there but haven’t been able to kick on just yet, and that’s something which someone like an Adam Lyth has done so well for years and years. It’s crazy how good he’s been.
Speaking to the likes of Lythy and Beany about it, your frequency of low scores as an opener are going to be higher than everyone else’s. To get those starts has been encouraging. The next step is being able to kick on and get a big one.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Noah has spoken to Adam Lyth and Fin Bean about opening the batting.
Opening is probably the best opportunity for development for myself.
Second-team attacks can vary in quality, but generally speaking as an opener you’re facing the best bowlers.
Lancashire, for example, they had Will Williams and Mitch Stanley opening the bowling. Will Williams averages around 25 in first-class cricket, and Mitch Stanley has just been on a Lions tour.
You know you’re facing the best bowlers with a new ball when the pitch is at its toughest. So, in a sense, it’s doing the best job of preparing me for the first team if I was to get the call up.
If you’ve opened the batting, it means you can bat in a lot of different positions, which is a real positive for me and hopefully the club.
Just going back to Matt Milnes. He’s going to be like a new signing when he is ready to come back into the first team. He’s really got that zip back into his bowling, he’s hitting the gloves hard, and it just looks like he’s ready to go. His accuracy is metronomic, and bat as well. On top of all that, he’s been brilliant to have around. He’s been helping the Academy lads out, so I’ve only got positive things to say about him.
The only problem we’ve had was when I declared on him down at Warwickshire when he was 63 not out. He wasn’t too happy about that!
Seriously, though, he’s been fantastic to have around.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Matt Milnes is closing in on a first-team return.
When we played in that game against Lancashire at Northern, we played against Adnan Miakhel, the all-rounder who was part of the Andrew Flintoff documentary, Freddie’s Fields of Dreams.
I’ve played against Adnan for a few years now having both played in the Under 16s and Under 17s games, and first and foremost he’s a really nice guy.
He’s a raw talent – he hits the ball a long way and bowls with some decent pace.
It’s a brilliant story, coming over from Afghanistan, not knowing anyone, not speaking English and then making his debut in the Lancashire seconds. Good luck to him. I hope he progresses.
At Driffield, we bounced back brilliantly on Saturday having not had a great start to the season.
We’d lost both our league games, only beating Tickhill in the K3 Dental Yorkshire Leagues Knockout Cup in an amazing finish. Chasing 235, I think we needed 34 off the last three overs and did it with 10 balls to spare. It was carnage at the end.
Alec Drury, who had an incredible year last year scoring 1,500 runs, got 120.
But, this weekend, we beat defending champions Clifton Alliance in the league, by eight wickets chasing 276. Clifton have actually now lost all three league games so far.
Picture by Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com. Noah has enjoyed talking captaincy with Yorkshire’s second-team coach Tom Smith, who led Lancashire during his playing career.
It was great to be able to contribute. Myself and Alec put on 231 for the second wicket, with him scoring 118 and me 115 not out.
I had a bit of a strange incident on Sunday – day three of the Warwickshire Championship game – when someone was impersonating me in the comments section of the club’s live stream.
I don’t usually go in the comments section, but I did by chance and saw a Noah Kelly saying that he was debuting at Essex and a few other things. So I mentioned it to the club, and whoever it was got blocked.
I’m sure there was no malice in there, and it was quite comical when you think about it. It was certainly a strange one to wake up to on a Sunday morning!
But it’s just a useful reminder how careful we all have to be on social media. It’s something which can so easily get you into trouble.
