Yorkshire block for survival as Roses rivalry takes on an autumnal feel

The 277th Roses match ended at Emirates Old Trafford this evening when rain interrupted Yorkshire's studious non-pursuit of 302 in 84 overs to beat Lancashire. Rarely can a county have shown so little interest in a target. When the players came off the field for the final time, the visitors were 102 for 3 after 63.2 overs with Tom Kohler-Cadmore on 34 not out after resisting 159 balls and Will Fraine unbeaten on 18 after blocking to death 83 deliveries. It was a low-key conclusion to a match that had been significantly interrupted on its first three days and played on a sleepy pitch whose lifelessness was only truly transcended by the brilliance of Luke Wells on the third afternoon.

However, context is all and Yorkshire coach Ottis Gibson was quick to defend his side after a result that keeps them in sixth place in Division One, 25 points ahead of eleventh-placed Warwickshire with both teams having three games to play. In other words, Gibson's team are not yet safe from relegation but they are a damn sight safer than they would have been if they had risked a dart at the target with an under-strength batting order and cocked the job up. Did the fourth innings of this game make for tough watching at times? Certainly. Did it make tactical sense in the context of a six-month season. Yes to that, too.

Understandably, perhaps, Lancashire's head coach, Glen Chapple took a different view. "We set them 302 in 84 overs which for me is 50-50 game," he said. "I don't know what more you can do. It was a flat enough pitch to block if you wanted to but that was a fair target. We'd have got 300 on that no problem, but we can't judge how positive teams are going to be."

"I'm proud of the lads with the way we batted today," Gibson responded. "Another team could have capitulated today."

But maybe we could all profit in these fervid times from celebrating a game that is comfortable with contrasting tempi and diverse formats. "It is on T20 nights like these where…the true Roses match increasingly resides," wrote my colleague David Hopps in June as he reviewed Lancashire's four-run victory in the Vitality Blast. Perhaps so, but maybe the indefinite article would have been a wiser word-choice.

For while the Roses match does, indeed, have a secure home on those hot summer nights, it also belongs to this late afternoon in early September with Championship points at stake, rain threatening and spinners like Tom Hartley and Matt Parkinson probing like malevolent dentists. Blast or Champo? It is not a binary choice. Help yourself to both and let us hope the current integrity of both competitions is not polluted by unnecessary reform, well-meaning or otherwise.

And the crowd at Emirates Old Trafford did have some biff and bang to amuse them on this high-clouded Mancunian day. That was on offer when Lancashire scored 77 runs in ten overs before the declaration this morning for the loss of Dane Vilas, bowled by Dom Bess for 28, and George Lavelle, caught by Will Fraine off Jonny Tattersall for a single. However, the home side's batting order has had a vaguely Hanoverian aspect of late, so George Balderson succeeded Lavelle on a day that had already seen Vilas shovel the ball directly behind him and Tattersall take the second - and last? - first-class wicket of his career.

The random eccentricities continued when Lyth was dropped at short-leg by Josh Bohannon off the first ball of Yorkshire's innings but neither the suffering bowler, Tom Bailey, nor Will Williams could make any immediate breakthroughs with the new ball. Indeed, it was the 12th over before Lyth's careless drive nicked a catch to Lavelle and Lancashire's morning got much better twenty minutes later when George Hill edged Tom Hartley to second slip, where Vilas took a sharp catch.

In retrospect, though, Yorkshire's lunch score of 30 for two represented their weakest moment of the day. For over an hour in the afternoon session Fin Bean batted with perfect composure to make 25 in two hours and it took a ball that bounced high out of the rough from Tom Hartley to bring about his downfall, George Lavelle taking the catch to complete a dismissal that heartened the watching Simon Sutcliffe, the former Warwickshire bowler who coached both Hartley and Lavelle at Merchant Taylor's School, Crosby.

"I think Fin's had a very good debut," said Gibson. "Even though he didn't go on and get a hundred or a fifty, he faced a lot of balls and spent a lot of time in the middle. Those innings will do the world for him going forwards into the rest of the season."

Bean did indeed bat well twice in this match and his innings on the final afternoon set the tone for Kohler-Cadmore and Fraine's stroke-starved siege. When their opponents were 81 for 3 after 48 overs, Lancashire asked for the ball to be changed but that is generally a certain sign that the fielding side does not like the shape of the game. Yorkshire were 84 for 3 at tea, at which point Kohler-Cadmore and Fraine's stand had yielded 17 runs in 19 overs. On the resumption another 18 were scored in 10.2 overs before a shower of rain interrupted play and, as we soon discovered, ended the whole shebang.