Ben Coad’s joyous season came up Roses as he demolished Lancashire at Headingley with career-best figures
Paul Edwards at Headingley02-Jun-2017
ScorecardThe first day of the Roses match began late, ended early and saw 216 runs scored, most of which had to be chiselled like flakes of granite from the rock face of the Yorkshire attack. A few followers of county cricket may view such a rate of progress in 69.2 overs as suggestive of slightly turgid cricket; yet to those schooled in the tempo and ethos of these encounters, such stately progress is familiar and almost reassuring. And for Ben Coad the afternoon’s play could scarcely have been more exciting, for it saw him pick up a career-best 6 for 25, thus setting a seal on an early season which has been overflowing with delights.Bowling from the Football Stand End, Coad removed the heart of Lancashire’s batting in a seven-over spell during which he took 4 for 16, at one stage taking three wickets in seven balls. When he had Stephen Parry, Lancashire’s joint top-scorer with 30, caught by Adam Lyth to end the innings, he joined Hampshire’s Kyle Abbott as the leading wicket-taker in Division One with 29 victims. No one has taken more than his 32 wickets in all first-class cricket this season.Coad is a remarkable young talent; he effervesces with slightly abashed enthusiasm and there are Test cricketers in this Yorkshire side who should yield their places to him should Andrew Gale and Gary Ballance ever have a full-strength squad from which to select.Coad is 6ft 3ins and still willowy; he has achieved his success by bowling a yard quicker than he managed last season and so straight that he rather deserved the leg side strangle to Andy Hodd that caused the dismissal of Dane Vilas. Much more typical of his virtues was the ball that nipped away yet caught the edge of Haseeb Hameed’s bat when the opener had laboured to good purpose for an hour over nine runs. Equally incisive was the lifting delivery on off stump which took the edge of Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s bat and gave a comfortable catch to Peter Handscomb at fourth slip.He nipped one back off the pitch to have Steven Croft leg before on 16 and later returned from the Kirkstall Lane End to lull Tom Bailey into chipping a catch to midwicket before that final dismissal of Parry was the prelude to as warm a standing ovation for a young cricketer as Headingley has seen in its recent summers of glory.”We couldn’t have asked for anything more today and I think that’s the best I’ve bowled this season,” said Coad. “Obviously the pitch has benefited me massively and the overhead conditions helped me out but I’m very happy with that. It’s a great feeling to be bowling as I am at the moment and I do know there are times when it’s going to be tough, so I’m just loving cricket at the minute.”Ben Coad rocked Lancashire with four wickets in 18 balls•Getty Images
And Yorkshire supporters in their turn are warm in their appreciation of Coad, no one more so than the county’s former president, Dickie Bird, who said yesterday that he would select him for next month’s first Test against South Africa. That Bird should express such a view is hardly astonishing; he would also have Ballance in Joe Root’s eleven, yet those who might mock his partisanship should not overlook his passion, his loyalty, his service. And after all, who was selecting Haseeb Hameed for the tour of India at this time last year?For Lancashire’s cricketers this was a desperately disappointing day. Parry and Ryan McLaren offered as much stern resistance as they could manage but McLaren eventually became Ryan Sidebottom’s third victim, the left-arm seamer having confirmed his return to full efficacy by removing Alex Davies and Luke Procter with successive deliveries in the seventh over of the day.Yet as Lancashire’s innings disintegrated before them, travelling supporters may have been wondering why their captain had chosen to bat when Yorkshire officials had been insisting all week that there would be “a bit in the pitch”. Perhaps coach Glen Chapple and captain Steven Croft were relying on the 12th axiom of Harry Makepeace to the effect that when a Yorkshireman says one thing about a Roses wicket, it’s a good idea to believe the opposite. If so, they were grievously in error and should have trusted the evidence of their eyes, not least the cloud cover and the moisture left in the atmosphere after the rain which had wiped out the morning’s cricket.Yorkshire’s pursuit of Lancashire’s poor total lasted 25.4 overs before rain returned. In that time Alex Lees batted very skittishly to make five and Handscomb played some lovely strokes before an ugly cut edged a catch to Davies off Procter. Lancashire had to be happy with such scraps of consolation, just as Hameed had to be content with the calmness and composure he showed in batting an hour against the Yorkshire’s pack of slavering seamers.Immense comfort settles on an opening batsman when he lets the ball go and ponders the energy expended by the panting bowler. Hameed reconnected with his strengths on the first day of this game, albeit in an innings of only nine runs. All the same, his innings in the Rajkot and Mohali Tests must seem distant memories for him just as this season is still fresh as paint for the immensely likeable Coad.The day’s cricket ended with Adam Lyth, another opener, making 40 not out, his best first-class score of the season, and some Lancashire supporters doubting whether the game would last beyond Sunday. They were not prophesying an away victory
