THE Vitality Blast match between early North Group high flyers Yorkshire and Durham at Emerald Headingley last night was washed out without a ball bowled.

Steady rain in Leeds throughout the afternoon and into the evening forced umpires Graham Lloyd and Tim Robinson to call the game off at 8pm.

Both sides came into the fixture having won three and lost one from four.

After the match, Yorkshire captain David Willey said: “It’s been a good start to the competition for us. Different people have stood up and performed, which is what good sides do.

“The England lads have helped us get off to a good start. We’ll lose a few now, including myself. But hopefully we can maintain the momentum.

“We’ve had a set game plan as to how we want to play, and we started work on it over 12 months ago. Last year was a bit disjointed, but it’s going well now.

“We’ve had some games where teams have come at us pretty hard, but we’ve been clear on what we’re trying to do with the ball.

“That’s a big contrast to where we were a couple of years ago when it could get quite frantic and no one was quite sure what they were trying to do.

“We’ve seen some great improvements, but my message to the lads is keeping learning from the good performances as well as the bad ones.

“The personnel we’ve got here, lads have been here for a period of time now.

“One thing we haven’t had in the past is a consistent method and picking lads to play to that method.

“Look at some of the guys who’ve missed out so far - Gary Ballance and Duanne Olivier have both played international cricket.”

As for the opposing camp, Durham coach James Franklin, with an update on Ben Stokes’ return to action following a broken finger, said: “There’s no timeframe at the moment.

“Every day, he feels like he’s getting that little bit closer. But when that day is that he gets out there, that’s to be determined by himself and the ECB.”