Fellows and McGrath light Yorkshire's path

Essex 283-9 Yorkshire 283-5 Yorkshire win by losing fewer wickets

Seldom are one-day games won by the side batting second blocking the last ball of the game and not attempting to score a run. However this was the case yesterday here when Yorkshire beat Essex by the narrowest of margins. Their much deserved victory came through the fact they had lost fewer wickets, in a game where the scores ended tied on 283.

Yorkshire have Gary Fellows and Anthony McGrath, two lesser known lights in their star studded team to thank for their exciting, and at one stage improbable victory, in this Cheltenham and Gloucester quarter-final.

Coming together with Yorkshire perilously placed at 155 for 5, and with their two big guns, captain Darren Lehmann and England's Michael Vaughan back in the pavilion, McGrath and Fellows nonchalantly turned this game around with a calmness and style reminiscent of Saturday's final between England and India at Lord's. This game, however, was not the edge of your seat thriller the scores suggest. Yorkshire's win, needing only three runs in the last over, had been sealed before the last over began.

After years of wondering whether young English cricketers actually watch and learn how the best players go about the job of winning games, these two showed they had paid attention, and that India's Mohammad Kaif and Yuvraj Singh are not the only ones capable of bringing a game back from the brink. Not once did McGrath and Fellows appear flustered by the size of the task as they blended aggressive and sensible stroke-play perfectly.

McGrath scored what turned out to be the winning run, a scampered single with two balls to go and won the man of the match award for his fine innings of 72 not out but it was the stroke play of Fellows who scored an unbeaten 68, and blocked the last ball, that broke Essex's hearts.

Up until this partnership of 128 the visitors were poor. In the field Yorkshire looked like a side lacking in confidence. They seemed happy to accept that Essex were going to post a big score on this slow dry pitch, and rather than aggressively attempt to restrict the home side, sat back and let them effortlessly ease their way to 283 for 9.

Essex, who won the toss, kept the scoreboard ticking with ease. Andy Flower's 75 was outstanding and symptomatic of Essex's performance with the bat. Only a six over mid-wicket by Aftab Habib got the crowd animated, as changes in the field or bowling did little to hinder the home side's progress. They just kept pushing the ball into the gaps and taking the easy runs on offer.

Essex may look back and think they should have made certain of the game when they had the visitors at five wickets down but indifferent batting during the last 10 overs, where they only scored 53 runs with six wickets in hand, was just as much to blame for their defeat.

As well as Fellows and McGrath, the England fast bowler Matthew Hoggard would have left this game feeling he had won a personal battle. The last time these two sides met two months ago Hoggard was flogged all around Chelmsford by the England captain Nasser Hussain. Yesterday, however, he gained revenge dismissing Hussain for just seven runs.