Picture by YCCC. Dawid Malan en-route to an unbeaten 69 at Edgbaston.
The Bears v Yorkshire
Vitality Blast, North Group
Friday June 6, 2025, 7pm
Edgbaston
Toss: Bears won it and elected to bowl.
Teams – Bears: Alex Davies c&w, Tom Latham, Moeen Ali, Sam Hain, Dan Mousley, Ed Barnard, George Garton, Danny Briggs, Jake Lintott, Craig Miles, Hassan Ali.
Yorkshire: Adam Lyth, Dawid Malan c, Will Luxton, James Wharton, Harry Duke w, Matthew Revis, Dom Bess, Matt Milnes, Jafer Chohan, Dan Moriarty, Will O’Rourke.
Summary: A damaging collapse of five wickets for seven runs in 17 balls during the second half of their innings when going well ultimately cost Yorkshire the chance of claiming their first Vitality Blast win of 2025 against the Bears.
Yorkshire were flying at 139-2 midway through the 15th over but quickly fell to 146-7 early in the 18th, going on to total 164-7 with Dawid Malan 69 not out off 48 balls.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, even on a used pitch, as the county slipped to a third successive defeat. This one came by six wickets with an over to spare, despite an excellent 3-23 from four overs for Matt Milnes.
Home captain Alex Davies opened up with 65 off 45 balls to end a two-game losing start for his county.
Match report: The most frustrating aspect of this defeat was that things were going so well for Yorkshire.
Their top order made an excellent start thanks to captain and opener Dawid Malan, whose 32-ball fifty was supplemented by dynamic contributions of 24 off 15 balls from opening partner Will Luxton and 39 off 23 from James Wharton at number four.
Luxton and Malan formed a new Yorkshire opening partnership and put on 33 in 4.1 overs, including a six over long-on against spin.
After Luxton was bowled trying to swing the left-arm spin of Danny Briggs to leg, Adam Lyth came in at three and pulled Moeen Ali’s off-spin to deep mid-wicket.
Picture by YCCC. James Wharton and Dawid Malan shared a third-wicket 74 against the Bears in a losing cause.
When he fell for nine, Yorkshire were 65-2 in the eighth over and in decent order.
After Malan and Wharton excelled, sharing 74 inside eight overs, the picture was even brighter at 139-2 midway through the 15th.
The Bears’ bowled only five overs of seam – Pakistani seamer Hassan Ali with four of them – but Yorkshire were attacking spin nicely.
Malan slog swept two of three sixes in a 32-ball fifty and Wharton did similar, hitting a couple of sixes.
However, things turned dramatically.
Wickets tumbled at an alarming rate. Wharton was caught at long-on off Jake Lintott’s left-arm wrist spin before Matthew Revis was caught behind down leg later in the 15th over.
Dom Bess chipped Moeen to mid-wicket and Harry Duke followed lbw to Briggs before Matt Milnes was run out by bowler Hassan in his follow-through after the batter has inside-edged a ball into his pad, lost sight of it in the crease and set off for a single.
What also hurt Yorkshire in this period was that Malan, in the final 33 balls of the innings – from immediately after the loss of the third wicket, faced only eight more balls.
He was starved off the strike and couldn’t find the boundary when he got it.
From there, while Yorkshire still had a total to work with on a pitch used for a women’s game in the afternoon, it proved to be nothing like enough.
Picture by YCCC. James Wharton bats against the Bears.
In reply, the Bears batted with control to ease themselves to a first victory of the campaign.
Alex Davies helped a Dan Moriarty full toss over deep square-leg in the fifth over, and the Bears reached the end of the powerplay at 50-0.
And when New Zealand captain Tom Latham pulled Revis for six over backward square-leg shortly afterwards, at 65-0 in the eighth, it felt like Yorkshire had one heck of a mountain to climb.
A feature of the Bears’ chase was how they regularly found the gaps, something Yorkshire just couldn’t do during the last quarter of their innings.
When Davies reached his fifty off 30 balls, they were 92-0 in the 10th over.
Bess made the breakthrough in the 12th over when he had Latham caught at deep mid-wicket – 103-1.
But with Davies and Latham having shared their county’s highest T20 partnership for any wicket versus Yorkshire, it was job done as far as they were concerned.
Milnes threatened that theory with two wickets in the 15th over as the score became 129-3 with five left. Wicketkeeper Duke took a superb leaping catch high to his left to get rid of Dan Mousley before Milnes struck again later in the over when Davies picked out deep mid-wicket.
Milnes also had Moeen caught at deep cover on the slice, leaving the score at 148-4 after 18.
With 17 needed off two overs, Yorkshire had an in. But Sam Hain hit Will O’Rourke for two fours and a six in the penultimate to leave Yorkshire under the cosh early in their campaign.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com. Matt Milnes was excellent with three wickets as he tried to drag the game out of the fire.
Magic Moment: Harry Duke, leaping high to his left, one-handed, took a brilliant catch to remove Dan Mousley off the bowling of Matt Milnes as the Bears fell to 123-2 in the 15th over.
Turning point: Yorkshire were motoring at 139-2 after 14.3 overs but fell to 146-7 after 17.2 overs, losing five wickets for seven runs. It meant the visitors fell well short of what was looking like a 200 total.
Stat of the match: Dawid Malan is now just two runs short of 10,000 career T20 runs having made 69 not out this evening. This was his 364th appearance for all teams.
What they said – Yorkshire captain Dawid Malan said: “It was disappointing again. Without trying to big it up, I feel we’re close to being in good positions in games and are having a little three or four-over spell where we either mess it up with the bat like we did here and at Worcester or in the field like we did first game.
“There are good signs that we’re doing a lot of things well. But we’re just not doing it for long enough.
“When you play against good teams, if you take your foot off the gas for three or four overs, they take advantage. That was a good example of it tonight.
“It was a pretty tough pitch to start on. You could see that when they batted. We just didn’t find ways to rotate the strike (at the end). We were a bit disappointed we didn’t get to 180. I think that would have been a good score.”
(Opening partnership change) “We planned to have Jonny Bairstow available, but he pulled up a bit sore with a calf issue. We’ll assess him for Sunday and hope he’s ok. With the match-up with Moeen and Mousley, we were looking at batting a right-hander up top to see if we could mess their plans up a bit. I thought Luxy (Luxton) played exceptionally well.”
(On Will Sutherland’s broken toe) “He’s got a little toe issue at the moment. We’re going to have a call with Cricket Victoria and see what the situation is with him. But hopefully he’s on the mend and will be available for selection.”
What’s next: Yorkshire are back in action on Sunday, against Leicestershire Foxes (3pm) at Headingley. It forms part of a Blast double with Yorkshire’s women, who also face their Foxes counterparts in the Vitality Blast 2 North Group (11am).
