Yorkshire grateful for R and R

Having endured a winter during which England plumbed the depths and kept on digging, it made a pleasant change to actually go and see some cricket, as I did today at The Oval. (that's the Brit Oval to you and me, the one in Kennington where Surrey and Yorkshire contested their first match of the LV=County Championship the day after England bowed out of ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 in Kensington.)

Jimmy Ormond, even more corpulent now than in his England days when his girth far exceeded his wicket tally, bowled the first ball to another old England lag Craig White in front of the ubiquitous "smattering", nevertheless a few hundred more than will be expending any interest in England's game against the West Indies on Saturday.

Had you half closed your eyes, and put out of your mind that the players were dressed in white, you might have begun to imagine that England was taking itself on in a one-day game. The batting was slow to begin with, and wickets fell just as the batsmen who had got in attempted to raise the tempo. The bowling was fairly laboured, with the return of 4 wickets in the morning session probably twice what they deserved.

While the openers scratched around, Anthony McGrath started to show why Yorkshire fought so hard to keep him, as he peppered the cover boundary with a few delightful drives before falling to Mahmood, the second of three wickets picked up by the Surrey medium pace duo of Mahmood and Clarke just before lunch. His predecessor Sayers was responsible for his own downfall, slashing at a wide offering from Clarke, which brought in the billed star turn, Younus Khan. Like many who single-handedly wear the crowd's expectations, he flattered to deceive, guiding his first delivery to the boundary before playing around a straight one three balls later.

With two of their three main batsmen having fallen on 73, Yorkshire were facing a repeat of the opening of the 2002 season against the same opposition and dismissal for a total of less than 150 on a pitch whose only concession to the bowlers was healthy carry through to the 'keeper. As he made his frequent wanderings towards square leg between deliveries, Jacques Rudolph's thoughts could have been forgiven for drifting away from the Kennington Oval to its near namesake in Barbados, where he might have been celebrating a crushing victory rather than scrapping to prevent suffering the reverse.

But if his concentration ever wavered, it did not show, as he safely saw Yorkshire through to the interval precariosuly placed at 87-4. After lunch, he and Gerard Brophy were responsible for the first period of bat dominating ball, with Brophy driving Ormond to the boundary three times in one over and forcing him out of the attack. Rudolph himself began to open up, revealing a pleasant array of off-side strokes to go with the natural left-handers' proficiency on the leg-side. Steve Magoffin, who bears some resemblance to his fellow Australian Shaun Tait in countenance if not bowling action (his arm is high and vertical) trapped Brophy on 127, bringing the great white hope of English leg-spin, Adil Rashid, to the crease.

Rikki Clarke, buoyed by a few wickets in the first session, brought himself back a tad prematurely, and decided to concentrate on a short-pitched line to the correspondingly sized Rashid. Maybe no-one has told him that small men tend to play short-pitched balls better than most, and, after Rashid had warmed up with a few wild and woolly fresh air shots, he was soon tucking into the Surrey captain, launching a hooked six into the crowd, followed up by a more delicate cut for another boundary. With Rudolph allowing no respite from the other end, Clarke soon elected to take the pace off the ball with spinners Doshi and Schofield.

The portents were not good, Rudolph greeting Doshi with three boundaries, all launched back over his head to the rope at long-off. To be fair, this was not reflective of the left-armer's overall performance, which was tight, if a bit lacking in bite. Chris Schofield, himself once the supposed future of English leg-spin, found himself bowling to his successor. One can only hope that Rashid ignored what he saw, as he was served up an entire repertoire of tripe all delivered at a pace too quick to allow the ball to grip on the surface. Both batsmen accepted the easy pickings, and it was Schofield who was made to look like the teenager.

As the game slipped away from Surrey, the two batsmen increasingly settled into the comfort zone, happy to wait for the bad balls, and scoring the majority of the runs in boundaries. Rudolph, in particular, accelerated once his half-century was registered off 84 balls, only braking once the second landmark was looming. Yet as he consolidated, Rashid pounced, a mixture of sweetly timed drives and savage leg-side hoicks rushing him past fifty and within sight of a maiden first-class century.

Sadly for him, he continued in this vein even when the new ball had been taken, and he was its first victim two overs in when he attempted to cut a ball too close to him and chopped on. Rudolph followed in quick succession, chipping to cover, before Surrey again lost the plot with the end of the road in sight. New captain Darren Gough strode to the wicket at 9, ahead of a man with a Test double-century to his name; maybe Magoffin stopped taking him seriously after a few almighty slogs (fresh-air, of course), but he made the mistake of dropping short and was clubbed for a meaty maximum over midwicket. Gough departed not long after, but Surrey could still not clean out the tail, with Bresnan and Gillespie ensuring that they will have finish the job tomorrow.