Derbyshire bowlers seal surprise win

Derbyshire brought an abrupt end to Yorkshire's recent run of good form in the Friends Life t20 North Group with a 12-run victory at Headingley Carnegie as the visitors successfully defended their modest 152 for 4.

It was Derbyshire's second victory of the campaign and it left Yorkshire with a harder task of reaching the quarter-finals after three victories and a 'no-result' from their previous four matches. Like Yorkshire had done earlier, Derbyshire kept pegging away with the ball and left-arm spinners Tom Knight and Chesney Hughes got through their overs cheaply with pacemen Tim Groenewald and Steffan Jones applying the pressure later on.

Gary Ballance was Yorkshire's top scorer with 46 which included three meaty sixes and a four before falling in the final over but by then the 3,812 crowd knew it was all over. Joe Root also finished with 46 but his innings used up 41 balls and he could only manage a couple of boundaries.

Yorkshire skipper Andrew Gale suffered a rare failure when he was stumped down the legside off a wide from Wesley Durston in the first over of the reply and Jonny Bairstow and Andrew Lyth looked sound until Lyth drilled a ball from Groenewald straight into the hands of Martin Guptill at cover point.

Anthony McGrath, out of luck and form, was run out responding to Jonny Bairstow's call for a single and Bairstow himself failed to capitalise on surviving an easy chance to Ross Whiteley on the boundary edge, being caught low at mid-off by Garry Park.

Then Ballance and Root joined forces in a stand of 82 for the fourth wicket but the runs never came quickly enough despite two sixes for Ballance off Jones and one off Groenewald, the left-hander falling to the penultimate ball from Jones which was caught on the mid-wicket boundary by Guptill.

Derbyshire never really recovered from the early loss of their openers after winning the toss and Yorkshire's tidy attack prevented them from cutting loose until the final overs, the innings being underpinned by man of the match Wayne Madsen who ended unbeaten on 61 from 48 deliveries with two fours and a six.

A wicket went down off the fifth ball of the match from Adil Rashid when Guptill was run out by Azeem Rafiq's accurate throw to the wicketkeeper and Durston departed lbw playing across a ball from Ajmal Shahzad with the score on 15 in the fourth over. Hughes and Madsen carefully set about repairing some of the damage but scoring was not easy against either pace or spin and Derbyshire were only 54 for 2 with half their overs gone.

The third-wicket pair put on 53 in eight overs before Hughes was bowled as he shaped to hit Rafiq to leg but Madsen then received solid assistance from Park who watched on as his partner powered Rafiq over long on for six in an over from Steve Patterson which cost 15.

Derbyshire's innings was given late impetus by Whiteley who plundered 17 off seven balls with a four and a six.