McGrath: Yorkshire have an exciting finale in prospect at Essex (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Anthony McGrath: Yorkshire have an exciting finale in prospect at Essex

4:30pm Monday 10th September 2012 in Sport By Anthony McGrath

Anthony McGrath column

It was a brilliant win last week, especially after Glamorgan had reached lunch on day one on about 110 without loss. To turn it around from that stage and to win with a day and a bit to spare was a great outcome.

It was nice for the supporters to see us win so comprehensively in our last home game of the season. It’s some consolation, I guess, for all the days of bad weather they’ve had to sit through. We really appreciate the backing they’ve given us in 2012.

I think the victory proves the point which we’ve been banging on about all summer as well in terms of the weather. We’ve said all along that if we’d had four full days’ cricket this season on more occasions then we would have won a lot more games than we have.

It’s nice to prove that when the weather has allowed a full game that we’ve gone out and won convincingly. We knew ahead of the Glamorgan game that the weather wasn’t going to be a problem and that was a help. If we’d had more matches like that, I’m confident we’d already be leading the table.

The victory means it’s all set up nicely for this week. Four weeks ago it probably looked like we could miss out on promotion. But now we’ve given ourselves a real chance of going up – and not only that but winning the title as well. It makes this week’s game really exciting.

Three or four weeks ago we wanted to have the chance of winning the title at Essex and we’ve got that now. We won’t be concentrating on how Derbyshire and Kent are getting on. We’ve got to go and do our own thing.

If we play like we did last week against Glamorgan, I’m confident we can win at Chelmsford. We’ll certainly be full of confidence. We couldn’t be in a better place, to be honest, after two straight wins. They’re a good side but so are we and hopefully we can pick up the result that we need to secure promotion.