Picture by David Rogers/Getty Images. Yorkshire visit Queen’s Park, Chesterfield tomorrow for a Blast clash. The venue is photographed here during Yorkshire’s Championship visit there in 2023, which the county won by three wickets.
Some call it the curse of Chesterfield, but Yorkshire’s current group are not looking too deeply into the historical side of things ahead of the county’s latest Vitality Blast clash with Derbyshire tomorrow (2.30pm).
“The good thing about it is there’s a lot of us boys who don’t have any skeletons there,” said Anglo-Australian fast bowler AJ Tye before leaving Hampshire last night.
“It is a new venue for a lot of us.”
Anthony McGrath even had a great big smile on his face when he revealed that he had aborted a planned chat with his players – or more a “rousing speech” as he put it – when he found out that someone such as Moeen Ali has never even stepped foot in Chesterfield and a couple of his other newbies had been planning to set their sat navs for Derby.
If you take the glass half empty view, Yorkshire have lost their last eight Blast games at the Queen’s Park venue, last winning there in 2014.
Now, let’s take the glass half full view. There’s a different feel about this Yorkshire team to years gone by in the Blast, and that’s even accounting for the fact they have just lost back-to-back games on the road against Leicestershire and Hampshire.
They are vastly more experienced, they have significantly more quality in their squad.
And, of course, last month they beat Derbyshire at Headingley in a game where late on they had no right to win it, slipping to 139-8 in pursuit of 195. They needed 56 off 27 balls and won thanks to some fireworks from Tye and Hassan Ali.
Picture by Dave Vokes/Hampshire Cricket. No Chesterfield skeletons for AJ Tye, who struck 44 and took three wickets in defeat at Hampshire last night.
Talking of scars or skeletons – use whatever phrase you want – well, Derbyshire will have a few to contend with reflecting on that chastening afternoon.
At the end of the day, this is a game of cricket played at a packed out, picturesque venue between two teams including plenty of impressive cricketers.
May the best team win!
“I’ve got good memories of Chesterfield, apart from last season,” said McGrath. “So I don’t see what all the fuss is about. But we’ll see.
“Until I was told last year what the record was, having not been at the club for a while, I didn’t realise that we hadn’t won there for so long.
“I’m sure during my days of the early T20s, we won there a bit, and in the Championship as well. I used to enjoy going to Chesterfield.
“We probably should have won there last year.
“We got 200, which we thought was above par. Then, I think they got 90 in the first six overs. That blew us out of the water.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. Anthony McGrath is hoping his Yorkshire side can complete the T20 season’s double over Derbyshire tomorrow.
“I haven’t got a theory on it, but I do know that if we play how we’ve played, with the players we’ve got, then the grounds are irrelevant really.
“We won’t be looking at it as, ‘We haven’t won at Chesterfield’.
“I think it’s just a matter of play what’s in front of you and win, and hopefully we can change that and start changing the narrative of those stats.”
That is certainly one thing McGrath and his players have done already this year, change the narrative around Yorkshire and T20 cricket.
Ok, it hasn’t been perfect, as last night’s two-wicket defeat off the penultimate ball against Hampshire – defending a 151-target – suggests.
But they are top of the North Group with four wins from seven and five games remaining in the race for the quarter-finals. Win tomorrow and they are in a great position to seal a top-two spot in the table.
McGrath added: “Again, I don’t think we’ve been losing because it’s Chesterfield’s ground.
“I think we’ve been losing because we haven’t been very good, and we’ve probably not had the right players in the right places and components and different things.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. AJ Tye and Hassan Ali celebrate victory over Derbyshire at Headingley last month.
“This season, we’ve been good with the powerplay bowling, good with the powerplay batting and good at the death.
“They’re three big things we’ve not been very good at.
“If you play well across 40 others, more often than not it doesn’t matter who you play or who you come up against.”
The North Group is jam-packed. Yorkshire and Notts’ are level on 16 points from seven games, closely followed by Lancashire and Leicestershire on 12 points apiece. Then come Derbyshire and Durham on eight points. They are the only teams in the group to have played six.
Derbyshire have just signed Pakistani left-arm wrist spinner Sufyan Moqim as an overseas replacement for Afghanistani Mohammad Ghazanfar, who is no longer available due to international commitments.
The Falcons haven’t plated a Blast game since June 7 when they were beaten by Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge by 10 runs chasing 184.
Captained by wicketkeeper-opener Aneurin Donald in the Blast, they also have Australian batter Caleb Jewell as their other overseas player.