Yorkshire youngsters impress

Yorkshire 189 for 2 (Lyth 112) beat UAE 188 (Saqib 44, Lee 3-32) by 8 wickets
Scorecard

A second-string Yorkshire side took the opportunity to rest their experienced stars, yet they still proved too strong for United Arab Emirates who were swept aside by eight wickets in Abu Dhabi.

Michael Vaughan and Anthony McGrath remained on the sidelines to watch the club's up-and-coming youngsters perform admirably on an intensely hot day. The performance of the day came from compact left-hander Adam Lyth, a Yorkshire league cricketer for Scarborough, who scored his first century of the tour to help Yorkshire sail to victory with 16 overs to spare.

Batting first after winning the toss, UAE made a dreadful start when Nadeem Aslam was caught behind by Jonathan Bairstow from the first ball of the day by Ajmal Shahzad. James Lee, the 20-year-old fast bowler, ended with the impressive figures of 3 for 32 while Ben Sanderson, on his tour debut, shared the new ball with Shahzad.

Sanderson struck in his third over by bowling Ravi Verma which left Saqib Ali, the captain, to try and tie together the UAE's fragile middle order. In reality, the asking rate of 3.76 per over was never likely to test Yorkshire, even without some of their star turns.

Lyth and Gary Ballance saw them off to a brisk start to their reply with Lyth racing to a 35-ball 50, but the fun ended when Balance chased a wide one. Lyth reached his deserved ton after barely two hours at the crease by pulling a towering six over mid-wicket off a short one from off-spinner Owais Hameed from only the 98th ball of his stay, but he fell in the quest to finish it quickly leaving Chris Taylor and Joe Sayers - captain for the day - to polish the job off.

"The youngsters have done brilliantly," said Craig White, Yorkshire's 2nd XI coach. "I thought we started off really well with the ball, we maybe bowled a few too many wides [17] but you can accept that at this time of year.

"Lyth has just shown how good he is, he is a top-class player who has batted beautifully. We came out here to win every game. We won the first, lost the second, and we won the third. It was a fantastic allround performance. They were fantastic in the field, everything about them was brilliant.

"We have got what we came here for. Yes we would have liked to have won the tournament, but we have got to look at other things."

Yorkshire find out on Monday who their play-off opponents will be, with a Roses clash against Lancashire a distinct possibility. "That would be nice," added White.