Haseeb gets into the Roses mood

Lancashire 299 for 7 (Hameed 114, Procter 79, Brooks 3-51) vs Yorkshire Scorecard

The head is perfectly still, the stance comfortably compact. The bat is held in the air, some thirty degrees above the horizontal; it rocks, poised for potential employment, in the batsman’s hands. As the bowler moves into his delivery stride the rear foot moves back a shade and then the front foot goes forward a little, but these movements betoken merely readiness, not commitment.

Yet the stroke, when it is played – if it is played – is full of conviction and one could be lured into the delusion that no other shot could have been attempted to that particular delivery. If the ball is left alone, the bat describes an arc as smooth as Giotto’s famous circle.

For many people, not all of them Lancastrians, the gentle budding of Haseeb Hameed’s career has provided a backcloth to the summer. The first day of the Roses match saw a further flowering of this quietly precocious talent. For while medals were won in Rio and goals were scored across England Hameed completed his third century of the season with a perfectly safe, lofted cover-drive off Adil Rashid.

For all that Yorkshire’s seam and swing bowlers capitalised upon some careless batting to take six wickets, one of them Hameed’s, for 61 runs in a game-changing evening session, this day was still made memorable by the stroke-play of a young man who takes quite as much care over his backward defensive shots as he does over his cover drives and may even take equal pleasure from them.

Supporters travelling from across the Pennines and even some home supporters may take a different and equally valid view, of course. The dismissal of Alviro Petersen to what became the final ball of the day completed eighty minutes’ cricket in which Andrew Gale’s bowlers had shown why Yorkshire remain many pundits’ favourites to retain their title. They understand that even when sessions are lost, days can be salvaged or even won.

The limpness of Petersen’s dismissal, playing on to Jack Brooks for 32, completed Yorkshire’s recovery and there was little surprise that Brooks celebrated his …

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