Clark and Jarvis provide a grand new tale for the old timers

Lancashire's former players met for their annual reunion on the second day of this match and over thirty of the old boys turned up for the bash. No doubt tales were told and mayhap some had grown in the telling. "An' you know what they said / Well some of it was true!" sang Joe Strummer, although probably not too many of the ex-cricketers meeting in the Emirates Old Trafford pavilion this warm Sunday will be familiar with The Clash's rich oeuvre.

But however outrageous the stories of white on green might have been as the late-morning claret slipped down they would have been tall indeed to eclipse events taking place in the middle. For as if to heighten the strangeness of Lancashire's rapid subsidence on Saturday evening, the home side's last three wickets added 195 runs in 37.2 overs during an extended session in which both Jordan Clark and Kyle Jarvis made career-best scores and the pair broke the county's tenth-wicket record for Roses matches.

That mark was established in 1991 when Peter Martin and Ian Austin added a very rapid 82 at Scarborough, partly, so another tale goes, to expedite a rapid return home in a game Lancashire were going to lose. As it turned out, the visitors went down by a mere 48 runs.

Clark and Jarvis's stand was worth 107 when the latter was leg before to Adil Rashid for 57 and the partnership was thus a single run shy of the tenth-wicket record in all Roses matches, which was set at Old Trafford by Lord Hawke and Lees Whitehead in 1903. Yet as the historians remembered long-dead cricketers and the former players recalled their own days of glory, the crowd - well, most of them, anyway - enjoyed the excitement offered by a morning which had begun when Clark and Arron Lilley rattled off a series of boundaries against an attack which pitched the ball up without employing, or maybe perfecting, the yorker.

Lancashire's eighth-wicket pair put on 87 in a mere 13 overs and they established a completely fresh tempo for their side's innings. Instead of calling on Rashid - "Henry the Hoover" is just one of the leg spinner's domestic appliance nicknames - to clean up Steven Croft's later batsmen, Yorkshire bowlers had to cope with two perfectly capable stroke-makers who employed the old tailender's maxim, "if it's up, it's off" to very good effect.

And even after Lilley had been caught behind off Patterson for 45 when attempting an uppercut to third man and Buck had been leg before to a full length delivery from Bresnan five balls later, Yorkshire had to deal with the galling frustration that always comes when an attack believes its work is done, only to discover that an hour's irritiation lies ahead.

One man's irritation is another's joy, of course, and so it was at Old Trafford late on the second morning of this game when Jarvis hit Rashid for a couple of big sixes over long on during an innings in which he took an equal share of that last-wicket stand with Clark.

Yet the exuberant hitting and the uninhibited sense of fiesta during the morning session threw the rest of the day into sharp relief as Yorkshire's batsmen made their way carefully to a 136 for two off 62 overs against an accurate attack and in a typically lively Roses match atmosphere. The only successes enjoyed by Lancashire bowlers were the dismissals of Adam Lyth, who was leg before to Jarvis for 25 and Jack Leaning, who was caught at slip by Liam Livingstone off Tom Smith for seven two balls after being dropped by Lilley, also in the slip cordon. Lyth walked across his wicket and hardly waited for the umpire's decision while Leaning was discomfited by a little extra bounce.

For the rest of the day Alex Lees and Andrew Gale accumulated runs in a fashion and tempo much more recognisable to those watching from the pavilion and, indeed, to Lord Hawke as well. A morning session that had seen 195 runs scored at 5.22 runs an over was followed a few hours later by an evening in which Lees and Gale, perfectly understandably, managed 61 in 35 overs, a rate of 1.74.

Yorkshire have their eyes on the follow on target which lies a distant 209 runs away; Gale may also be relieved to score what would be only his second fifty of the Championship season, although it is probably three figures that he craves rather more and the return of the famous pennant most of all. Lancashire know that the new ball is only 18 overs away and are still nursing fond hopes of what would be their first victory in a four-day Roses match at Old Trafford since 2000.