Head, Leaning tons as Yorks smash Leics

Individual hundreds from Travis Head and Jack Leaning and a partnership of 274 - a List A record for the county - helped Yorkshire complete a third consecutive win in the Royal London Cup, keeping the Vikings firmly on course to reach the quarter-finals of this season's competition.

Head hit 175 off 139 balls while Leaning finished unbeaten on 131 off 110 as Yorkshire recorded their highest List A total against another first-class county, beating the 352 for 6 made against Nottinghamshire in Scarborough in 2001. Their highest total, 411 for 4, was made against Devon in 2004.

Leaning, whose century was his second in List A cricket, said it had been a pleasure to bat with Head, in only his fourth match for Yorkshire, describing the 21-year-old as "a huge talent who will play a big part for Australia in the future".

"It was also good to keep up our current form. Wins always breed confidence, and we can take this into a busy period of games," Leaning added.

Having been asked to bowl first, Leicestershire might have thought fortune was going to favour them after Yorkshire opener Adam Lyth, who scored centuries in his two previous List A games, was run out for just 2 following a mix-up with partner Alex Lees.

Lees himself was stumped for 32 off the bowling of Foxes offspinner Rob Sayer, coming down the wicket and missing with an ugly heave across the line, but 51 for 2 was as good as it got for Leicestershire. On a flat track Head looked in fine touch from the start, while Leaning hit the third ball he faced, from Sayer, high over long-off for six.

Head brought up his half-century from a relatively sedate 60 balls, but accelerated thereafter, reaching his hundred off 99 deliveries. He might have been dismissed on 116, when he lofted a delivery from Mark Cosgrove to long-off, but although Sayer held the ball one-handed above his head, he did so in the act of stepping over the boundary and was forced to throw the ball back inside the rope.

Leaning also had an escape, a more straightforward chance dropped by Robson at deep midwicket off Sayer when he was on 83, and the pair had eclipsed Yorkshire's previous List A record partnership of 242, between Martyn Moxon and Ashley Metcalfe against Warwickshire in 1990, by the time Head passed 150 and Leaning his hundred.

Head eventually top-edged a simple catch behind the wicket to be dismissed for 175 - remarkably, still 25 short of his best List A score of 200, made for South Australia last October - but Leaning finished unbeaten as Yorkshire continued to pile on the runs.

Leicestershire's reply began poorly, when captain Mark Pettini was bowled by a superb in-swinging delivery from David Willey, and though Angus Robson could consider himself unlucky to glove an attempted hook at Tim Bresnan and be caught by the wicketkeeper down the leg side, Kevin O'Brien can only have been disappointed with the shot that saw him give midwicket a simple catch.

Cosgrove was caught off a leading edge, and though Lewis Hill played well in going to 50, the rest of the Leicestershire batsmen had no answer to the spin of Azeem Rafiq and Adil Rashid.