Bairstow. And rightly so. The kid is a real talent, even if he does bear an uncanny resemblance to Todd Flanders.

I saw him a few times last season when he wasn't keeping and he's a right gobby so and so isnt he?? I suppose you need that, especially being a keeper!

Do you think keeping and batting fairly high up the order will work for him?

Aren't all keepers? Annoying, lying gits the lot of em*.





At the moment, there's no choice. Mind, he has looked solid with the bat so far when the rest of the top order has failed miserably. He is a good batsman in his own right - seeing him launch one out of Trent Bridge last season was a bit special - and it doesn't seem to faze him having to combine the roles. If he was opening, I'd have an issue, but not playing him at four or five.











* - except Kumar Sangakkara who is a total gentleman.

Good start for Lancs this morning. Sussex started on 147-0 and are now 186-4.

Sussex now 5 down and still 70 behind....Come on Lancs and come on the weather, play fair for once....

A frustrating innings by Naved Arif (a career high 66 n.o. at the moment) looks more likely to scupper Lancs than the weather today. Annoyingly Monty Panesar's hung around with him for 11 overs!

Yorkshire lose again. The Borren avatar stays.

Feeble batting performance by Yorkshire against a mediocre Derbyshire attack.



Better effort in the Championship game over the four sessions at Trent Bridge mind. Career best for Joe Root, falling five short of a hundred, and a maiden first class century for Jonny Bairstow.



Yorkshire 383-8 just before lunch on day two.

Yorkshire look at least 2 batters short of being a good side to me. Fair play to the ones they have who are doing a decent job of holding it together.



A couple of injuries and poor form and I feel I might get a phone call though.

double ton - good effort.

A super effort to be fair, but it still looks a fragile top order

Lancashire hammer Warwickshire with Keedy and Kerrigan getting the last 8 wickets for just 9 runs between them. Glorious stuff.

Chris Gayle smacked 37 off one over for Bangalore today.



I have not mistyped anything in that previous sentence.

20/20 cricket will be the death of cricket as most fans know and love it.....All it is doing is breeding a generation of players who think smacking every ball out of the ground is the way to 'build' an innings.



In every game I've played this year, I've seen youngsters (16-19year olds) approach their innings with total disregard for anything resembling a defence.....Yes, many have the talent to hit a ball a long way, but none of them have the ability to spend more than 20 minutes at the crease.



Yes, its entertaining to watch the likes of Gayle, but if I wanted to watch glorified slogging, I'd watch baseball.

Decent recovery from Yorkshire yesterday, from 7-2 and 99-5 to a current position of 343-9. The depth in the batting line-up is coming in handy with the top order currently looking very wobbly.



Not quite sure why we're still batting though, given the weather forecast is iffy for the next three days.

Looks like we'll have no batting line-up or wicketkeeper for the Roses game this week.

Your bowling attack will render a major batting line-up irrelevant I fear.

The one that had 14 overs to take the last two Hampshire wickets on a wearing pitch and couldn't?



I know times is tight financially, but I cannot believe Yorkshire opted to go into this season without bringing in an overseas player to strengthen the batting, even if only on a short-term deal.

I think the role of the overseas player in the modern county game is overrated. It's so difficult to get a decent one for a significant length of time it hardly seems worth it, and if you sign one for the sake of having one you risk ending up with a real turkey, as Essex seem to have done with Lonwabo Tsotsobe after their moves for Peter Siddle and Tim Southee fell through. How many other counties have got one you'd really want in your own team? I reckon Chaminda Vaas at Northants is probably the best one at the moment pound for pound, and he's 37.



Surrey can usually outbid most counties and we wasted two years looking for an overseas spinner while bringing in various other players on short term deals to little effect. The last overseas player we had who made a real difference was Harbhajan Singh in 2007, although present incumbent Yasir Arafat should at least be available for the whole season and has a decent all round game.

No McGrath, Bairstow, Brophy, Shahzad or Bresnan for Yorkshire.



Simon Guy dragged out of retirement to keep wicket, Ashraf, Hannon-Dalby and Ballance into the side.



I predict another innings win for Lancashire within 3 days.

Your prediction looks a little generous to Yorkshire at present....2 days maybe??...

Hang on, Lancashire's batters have yet to be given the chance to screw it all up and make 141 look like a massive score....

Lancashire 4/6 this morning at Ladbrokes (draw no bet). Stealing money really, but couldnt back them, me been a Yorkshireman and all that.

On the positive note it looks like I won't have to set foot in Liverpool this weekend.

Lancashires tail starts at number 4 so not getting too giddy just yet.