Royal London One-Day Cup

Yorkshire 227; Gloucestershire 5-0

BOTH Yorkshire and Gloucestershire’s cricketers were left frustrated yesterday afternoon after rain brought a premature end to their opening match in the Royal London One-Day Cup at Scarborough, writes Paul Edwards.

However, despite the home side’s big-name batting line-up, Michael Klinger’s men could claim that they were in the ascendant when the rain that had plagued the rest of the country finally arrived on the Yorkshire coast.

The home side scored a barely adequate 227 all out in exactly 50 overs and it could have been even better for Gloucestershire as the last two wickets added 76 invaluable runs. Gloucestershire’s openers had made just 5-0 off two overs when the weather closed in from the south west. Each side took one point from the 'no result' game.

Gloucestershire’s frustration was probably compounded by the fact that they only needed to have scored 20 without loss in the opening ten overs of their innings to have won the game under the Duckworth-Lewis system.

Even more significantly, they could take pleasure from a bowling display that had restricted a Yorkshire side which included Gary Ballance (31), Will Rhodes (32) and Tim Bresnan (43 off 55 balls) to a shade above four and a half runs an over with impressive seamer Craig Miles taking 4-29 including two maidens.

Gloucestershire skipper Klinger said: "It was more difficult than it looked to get runs out there. There was some tennis ball bounce and so I kept a slip in throughout Yorkshire’s innings.

"I was pleased with all our bowlers but especially Tom Smith, who I kept back deliberately to contain them at the end of the innings."