Yorkshire's top batting order these days goes out to meet opposing bowlers with all the omnipotence of the Titanic facing an iceberg. For the second successive day, the county threw away a match in the first few minutes with a display of complete incompetence.
Durham at Riverside were the beneficiaries, winning the match by nine wickets. Yorkshire again won the toss, but it did them even less good on Monday than on Sunday. Within minutes their top three were back in the dressing room, all without scoring and with only a wide on the board. Jacques Rudolph was bowled by the first ball of the match, Craig White was lbw and Gerard Brophy flicked a catch straight to midwicket.
Ottis Gibson, as he so often does, was the main tormentor, but basically it was feeble batting against bread-and-butter bowling. Some balls moved off the pitch, and it was the off-cutter, so successful against Yorkshire in recent matches, that removed the luckless White. Inzamam-ul-Haq, once again, was also to fall lbw, this time for 7. Not until the sixth over, after nine extras, was the first run scored off the bat, and in the eighth Anthony McGrath, captain for the day in the absence of Darren Gough with a sore shin, hit the first boundary. Only three more were to follow in the entire innings, plus a six from Bresnan.
