Derbyshire travel to Leeds for their fourth Vitality County Championship game of the season to face Yorkshire.
Heritage Officer David Griffin previews the match.
Derbyshire and Yorkshire have faced each other 213 times in first class matches, although three of the scheduled games were abandoned without a ball being bowled with a further 84 drawn.
Derbyshire’s record against Yorkshire is not a glorious one – just 20 wins set against 106 for the visitors – although some supporters will recall a brief golden period from 1989 to 1991 when Derbyshire won three consecutive games at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, though nobody will recall the three successive wins back in the late 1870s including the only time Derbyshire have ever achieved home and away wins in the same season in 1879.
Derbyshire’s highest innings total against Yorkshire is 523 all out in the drawn fixture at Derby in 2005 when Ant Botha scored an undefeated 156 while Yorkshire’s top score came at Leeds in 2013, when they amassed 677 for seven declared with Joe Root making a superb 236 and Jonny Bairstow 186. This came after Chesney Hughes had scored 270 not out, the second highest individual score in Derbyshire’s history, but even that was not enough to stave off an innings defeat.
Yorkshire also won the return fixture at Chesterfield by an innings while the most recent encounters, at Chesterfield last June, and at Scarborough in September ended in wins for Yorkshire.
Derbyshire players have registered 59 hundreds in these games, four of which were double centuries, Kim Barnett and Bill Storer each scoring four tons.
Barnett made 210 not out at Derby in 1987, taking part in a second wicket partnership with Tim Tweats of 417 which remains the highest for any wicket, and in addition to the doubles made by Barnett and Hughes, John Eggar scored 219 at Bradford in 1949 and Dean Jones 214 not out at Abbeydale Park, Sheffield in 1996.
Amongst the current Derbyshire squad, Wayne Madsen has a hundred against Yorkshire to his name, scoring a magnificent 141 at Chesterfield in 2013, rated by many observers as the finest of his many centuries for the county, while in the fixture at Chesterfield last year Leus du Plooy (170) and Haider Ali (146) both made outstanding hundreds.
Bill Storer, one of four Derbyshire wicketkeepers to play Test cricket for England, was the first to score a hundred in each innings of a game for the county, making 100 and 100 not out against Yorkshire at Derby in 1896, while in the same match Harry Bagshaw became the sole Derbyshire player to make a hundred before lunch against Yorkshire.
Derbyshire have managed six century partnerships for the tenth wicket in first class cricket and the two largest were both against Yorkshire: by Alan Hill and Martin Jean-Jacques (132 at Sheffield in 1986) and Geoff Miller and Simon Base (107 at Chesterfield in 1990).
Derbyshire’s bowlers have taken five Yorkshire wickets in an innings 113 times. The legendary 19th century fast bowler Bill Mycroft performed the feat ten times with a best of seven for 33 at Bramall Lane, Sheffield in 1879. He also recorded the best match figures – 13 for 65 – in the same game.
More recently, the last Derbyshire bowlers to take five wickets in an innings were Anuj Dal who took five for 72 in Yorkshire’s first innings at Scarborough, and Alex Thomson who recorded figures of five for 190 in the second.
Derbyshire’s best innings figures at Leeds are eight for 29 by Paul Newman in 1988; Wilfred Rhodes recorded the best for Yorkshire taking seven for 19 in 1914.
Only three bowlers have taken ten wickets in a match at Headingley; Yorkshire’s Hedley Verity took 11 for 69 in 1932, while for Derbyshire Les Jackson took 11 for 91 in 1958 and Derek Morgan 10 for 78 in 1954.
The last bowler to take ten in a match was Philip DeFreitas who took 10 for 172 at Derby in 1997.
Only one Derbyshire bowler has taken a hat trick against Yorkshire, John Platts performing the feat – the first bowler to take three in three for the county – at Derby in 1880.
