The Verdict

New Zealand 350 all out
v England 350 all out
New Zealand 454-8 declared
England 255 all out
New Zealand win by 199 runs.
at Headingley

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Twitter @ball_sup

The Event

There is little transparency in how much Counties pay to host Test Matches, & how many they need to break even/make a profit.  Although we’ll be able to make more sense of it when the accounts are published.  What we do know is the crazy business model.  A large slice of every Counties income comes from the central ECB pot. Those Counties who host Test Matches hope to make a profit from gate receipts & commercial activities at the Test. Throw in to the melting pot the fact that different areas/bars at Headingley are owned/leased by different parts of the Cricket/Rugby/Headingley/Caddick empires. Minefield.

What we do know is that Members have been berated by The Club. It is your duty to come along to Test Matches.  If you want the County to survive do not throw money at supporting the County. Throw money at supporting Test Cricket. If you want McDonalds to make money, eat at KFC. Financial madness.

Fair play to Yorkshire. The claim was that the two things putting Members off are/were the Stormtrooper behaviour of the G4 Stewards & the ticket prices. Certainly don’t help.  I will say I thought the Stewards were friendlier this year. I didn’t take a Thermos flask on Day 1, but I asked whether one would be allowed (yes).  I had a two litre plastic bottle of Aldi knock off Coke confiscated on Day 2. I was allowed to bring soft drinks in. In Plastic bottles only. But “must be 500ml or less, otherwise dangerous”.  The Steward poured a large slug into a plastic cup & I was allowed to walk that through the turnstile.  I paid a ton for a five day pass. I was able to choose my own seats by discussion on the ticket hotline. Back row of the Trueman, front row of the East Stand Shelf. I think that is decent.

The West Stand is now divided up into a) anything goes KnobFest, b) anything goes except fancy dress & c) humans. Not my bag, but I’ll sort of applaud that decision. It looked like fewer points of confrontation. Fellas walking along the rows and aisles gathering up plastic cups to reduce Beer Glass Snakery. But, if you got one off the ground in bays 1 & 2, then good on yer, left to your own devices. Bit more of an attempt to restrict the East Stand Long Room to those with East Stand tickets & YCCC Members.

I was on the edge of a group who were sending one of their cohort out with multiple tickets, passing them to others & smuggling them into the Long Room. They had also managed to get glass bottles of beer in. And one of them was pouring alcohol (maybe Gin/Vodka) into her Coke from a Hawaiian Tropic suntan cream bottle. Salute, but ggggrrrr.

The stats show just shy of 44k over the five days. 5k up on the NZ Test 2 years ago. But, I’ll never know whether that’s more money or not.  I’ll call it as slightly disappointing. Days 2 & 3 were on the weekend. Less than 9k on the Sunday. Only £15 tops on the Monday, just over 5 and a half k.

There are only so many tweaks you can make. There are only a limited number of sideshows you can employ. Anyway, there you have it. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole affair. I never really left the Long Room on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday - so even the weather didn’t get to me.

The Yorkies

Plunkett never made the XI. Root made one run in 7 balls. Ballance made 29 & 6. Lyth made his maiden ton & 24. Well. Lyth is making his way. Root is cemented & shit happens, Ballance looks out of sorts. He needs to go back to LV Cricket & sort it.

What we know

Some of the catching & work in the field was poor. The bowlers can leak runs when attacked. They seem inflexible sometimes and some of the stuff v the Tail was shocking. They don’t seem able to get control back. Swann was a master & we miss him. Our seam/swing options are fundamentally attacking - but we’ll need control sometimes. And not 8 on the off side control either.

I can understand why they don’t see Adil Rashid as a control option. Although I think they are a little blinkered in that view. Swann could give you control and bowl sides out on the 5th Day. I have a lot of time for Moeen Ali, but he ain’t doing either. Rashid would give you the 5th Day side out option imho.

Yorkshire redress the balance by having the metronomic Patto as the control option to counter-balance Rashid. And he’ll chip in with 5 wickets an all. It’d be interesting to see England go for an attacking spinner balanced by a less attacking, more controlling seamer. Not happening though.

We’ve got the bile filled Aussies up after the NZ ODI series. And Bayliss as the new Coach. I’m expecting he’ll have to go to Business As Usual as his first option. Unless he’s got a definite way of playing on his mind - eg a spinner to give you control or a spinner to attack. Interesting though.

The Beer

North Bar. Fell, Tinderbox IPA on keg at 6.3%. Golden yellow & opaque. Very citrus in the mouth. Lemon even. Soon gives way to deep roof of the mouth bitterness. A lingerer rather than a growing finish. Very little sweetness, so doesn't taste that abv.

Bad Co., Comfortably Numb on cask at 3.8%. Great tasting beer for a lower abv. Some simple sweetness in there. Maybe on the edge of pineapple syrup. Just enough hoppy bitterness to keep you interested. It develops ever so slightly sour, and is that ginger as well. Further you get down it, more it's about the hops. Good find that.

150/315