Hodd carrier to rescue after Yorkshire crumble

Nottinghamshire 38 for 2 trail Yorkshire 282 (Hodd 96*, Rafiq 74) by 244 runsScorecard

Even in this age of cash and context, the Scarborough Festival still takes place but its nature has changed. For evidence of this one had only to glance at the Division One table before this match or observe the admirable Steven Mullaney’s reactions as he ran out Adam Lyth and took three vital wickets on the game’s opening morning.

Mullaney reckons his team may need three more wins to avoid relegation; meanwhile, near the top of Division One, Yorkshire are 26 points behind Middlesex and this is their game in hand.

So a great deal may depend on the result of this seemingly festal cricket match. There could therefore have been few better times for Andy Hodd to make 96 not out, his best score for Yorkshire, or for Azeem Rafiq to help him add 132 for the seventh wicket. Their partnership revived a side whose top-order batting remains very flaky and it snuffed out any Nottinghamshire hopes that they would seize a decisive early advantage.

The crowd is wrapped up in it all at Scarborough, too. As at most outgrounds, with North Marine Road and Cheltenham the grandest of the genre, they are closer to the action and their joys are thus plainer than they might be when expressed from half way up a tiered concrete mountain. Their disappointment could also be touched when Whitby-born Lyth was run out at the bowler’s end, Mullaney tipping a fierce drive from Alex Lees on to the stumps and wheeling away in glee like a boy who had snagged an apple.

The concern of most of the 5000 folk in the ground turned to plain worry half an hour later as Yorkshire slipped helplessly to 36 for 4. Lees and Jake Lehmann both edged …

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