Crawley, Fairbrother work hard to revive Lancs

An unbroken liaison of fifty-three for the third wicket between a hard working John Crawley and Neil Fairbrother has enabled Lancashire to work its way back into its tense struggle with Yorkshire by the end of day three of this excellent Roses match at Headingley.

The Crawley (46*)-Fairbrother (26*) stand, which began with the visitors still thirty-five runs away from erasing a first innings deficit of 109 runs and accordingly still in serious trouble, enabled the Lancastrians to end the day in upbeat mood and with a chance at least of leaving Leeds tomorrow with their ongoing quest for Championship honours largely undamaged. Decisions by Mike Atherton (17) to follow a Chris Elstub (1/15) outswinger and Andy Flintoff (25) to drive at a wide ball from Chris Silverwood (1/34) had looked to be condemning the visitors to a sticky predicament, but the right hand-left hand combination offered by the third wicket pair soon redressed the balance. Crawley proved particularly adept at working the ball through the square leg and mid wicket regions, while a slightly more defensively inclined Fairbrother accumulated most of his runs with deft shots into gaps on both sides of the wicket.

Earlier in the day, it had been two notable transformations which had propelled Yorkshire toward its sizeable first innings advantage. First, the continuing mid-season metamorphosis of David Byas (81) from opener to middle order player resulted in possibly his most telling individual contribution of the summer and then, the wag of an until now impotent Yorkshire tail lifted the locals to the unanticipated heights of a fourth batting point. In a brilliant response to the early loss today of chief strokemaker Darren Lehmann (83), Byas became the chief architect of Yorkshire's progress toward a total of 376. He was given robust support by Gary Fellows (46) and Chris Silverwood (34), whose respective ease in mixing attack with defence belied the general difficulties that had confronted other batsmen on the opening two days of the match.

Having enjoyed a slice of fortune yesterday when the heavens opened to disturb a dangerous partnership between Byas and Lehmann, Lancashire had hit back strongly as play began on the third morning. Without addition to his overnight score, the latter was trapped on the back foot by Mike Smethurst (3/101) and adjudged to have been hit in line with his off stump. Glen Chapple (3/80) then further raised the Lancastrians' hopes of claiming a first-innings lead with another lbw decision against Richard Blakey (0) in the following over. Such ambitions were, however, quickly dashed and it was not until late in the day that matters were at least partially restored.