Cloudy outlook for Yorkshire as Berg tips contest

Yorkshire 275 for 9 (Lehmann 58, Bresnan 56, Berg 5-54) v HampshireScorecard

“Don’t look down, look up” goes the old Yorkshire adage about whether to bat or bowl first at Headingley. A few hundred miles south at the Ageas Bowl the proverb is ever-more appropriate, as overhead conditions appear to be shaping the game at Hampshire’s ground with increasing regularity.

Upon winning the toss in this crucial match, with repercussions for the top and bottom of the Championship table, Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale looked up, saw a cloudless blue sky and opted to bat. With the two most recent first-innings scores at this ground being 637 for 7 and 548 for 6 Hampshire would have been forgiven for preparing themselves for another long stint in the field, having last week been run ragged for 137.4 overs in their most recent Championship match at Taunton.

In a season in which fortune has frequently frowned on Hampshire, with injuries and illness robbing them of some of their best players, they could probably hardly believe their luck when after just 20 minutes of play, in which Yorkshire’s openers had looked relatively untroubled, the sky was suddenly choked by dense and leaden clouds. Five minutes later the floodlights were on, a couple of balls jagged sharply past the outside edge and the whole feeling of the occasion had been transformed.

What followed was an engrossingly competitive day that ebbed and flowed as readily as the clouds rolled in and out, in which ball dominated bat for large swathes of it and ended with Hampshire in a …

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