Yorkshire put on famous last–wicket stand as Worcestershire toil

Ajmal Shahzad and Ryan Sidebottom combined for one of the finest last-wicket stands in Yorkshire's history to leave them in a prime position to force a victory that would take them above Worcestershire and out of the bottom two of the championship. They joined forces at 258 for nine, with Yorkshire's lead 90, before carrying the game away from Worcestershire with a partnership of 109 in 24 overs, the eighth-highest in Yorkshire's all-time list, to give the White Rose a first-innings lead of 199. Worcestershire, four wickets down by the close of the second day, looked as if the shock was too much. Sidebottom's dad Arnie, also a former Yorkshire cricketer, was in the crowd as Ryan walked out as Yorkshire's last man, but he did not hang around to watch him pull off a notable family double. Arnie is often a little unsettled watching Ryan bat. "He'll probably get out against the new ball," he said and took his grandchildren to the railway station. By the time he got back, Shahzad had holed out for 70 at long on against the Pakistan off-spinner Saeed Ajmal and a notable stand had entirely escaped him. Ryan will have to tell the kids: "You'll always remember the day when you and your grandad never saw me get that hundred stand at Scarborough." Arnie also has a century stand for Yorkshire's last wicket to his name, one shared with Arthur "Rocker" Robinson against Glamorgan in Cardiff in 1977. It was also his only championship hundred, but that Yorkshire side did not go in much for history. "I reached my own hundred by nicking one from Tom Cartwright – the famous Tom Cartwright – but I didn't know who he was," Arnie laughed. Cartwright was in his final season in a career that brought him 1,536 first-class wickets at 19.11 runs so he had been hard to miss. It was Shahzad's innings that knocked most of the cobwebs from the day. There is an ebullience about Shahzad that was well received by the Scarborough crowd. He interchanged vigorous drives with clever darts square on the offside and, as his appetite grew, added three straight sixes for good measure. The first six came against the left-armer Jack Shantry, who until then had kept Yorkshire in check. Two more followed against the spin of Ajmal, the second lodging in the gutter of the tearoom stand. It was Shahzad's first championship half-century for two years, and only his third ever. He is better than that and this may help him to recognise it. Graham Roope coached Shahzad as a teenager at Woodhouse Grove school, a job that Arnie Sidebottom took up after Roope's death. Roope believed that Shahzad was as good a batsman as a bowler. Now that he has cut out his exaggerated walk across his stumps as the bowler delivers, long enough for him to have caught a bus, he has a better chance to prove it. This was the 13th century stand by Yorkshire for the last wicket in the championship, a list famously led by the 149 put on by Geoffrey Boycott and Graham Stevenson against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 1982. Stevenson's 115 was a world record for an unbeaten no11 batsman; Boycott was last out for 79. "His brawn and my brains," said Boycott.