Essex slump towards defeat by Yorkshire
Rothesay County Championship Division One, Ambassador Cruise Line Ground, Chelmsford (day three)Yorkshire 216 & 426-6 dec: Lyth 185, Bairstow 79, Wharton 61; Thain 3-96Essex 123: Pepper 30; Hill 6-51, Coad 3-20 & 64-4 White 3-17Essex (3 pts) need another 456 to beat Yorkshire (3 pts) with six wickets standingMatch scorecard
Adam Lyth's patiently accumulated 185, and Jonny Bairstow's typically belligerent half-century, set Essex an unlikely 520 to prevent Yorkshire chalking up their second County Championship win of the season.Lyth's second century of the spring, the 39th of his 18-year first-class career, spanned six hours and 41 minutes of determination and obduracy. The 37-year-old left-hander shared a 153-run second-wicket stand with James Wharton, who added 61 to his unbeaten 63 from the first innings, that underpinned Yorkshire's 426-6 declared.The declaration was hastened by Bairstow's 79 from74 balls that included three sixes and was part of a roller-coaster sixth-wicket stand of 99 with Matty Revis, who contributed 37 off 32 balls. Bairstow, dropped on five by slip that would have enhanced Thain's analysis, played an unorthodox reverse sweep-cum-pull that sent a delivery from Critchley for six over point. With the declaration looming, Bairstow and Revis rattled off 29 runs in a 14-ball spree before the captain raced past his second half-century of the season with two sixes in the last over before tea from Shane Snater that also included a ramped four.Yorkshire batted on for 14 balls after tea before Bairstow holed out to long-on and immediately called a halt to proceedings.With Sam Cook rested in light of his potential England debut against Zimbabwe later this month, the Essex attack had lacked penetration. And the only consolation for Essex's dispirited fielders who circled the boundary by the end, were career-best bowling figures of 3-96 for young seamer Noah Thain.The sense of gathering despair continued when Essex batted. They lost four wickets in the 27 overs that remained in the day in the face of some accurate seam bowling from Jack White, who took 3-17. Essex eked out 64 runs by the close but, with 456 to win, are staring down the barrel of back-to-back defeats when they resume on day four.Their chances of batting out nearly four sessions became considerably slimmer when White got a delivery to jump up around Dean Elgar's adam's apple as early as the second over and it was fended off into third slip's hands.George Hill followed up his six-wicket haul from the first innings by trapping Tom Westley lbw with only his fourth delivery in the second. And next over Charlie Allison drove White uppishly to a tumbling mid-off while Robin Das nudged one to first slip.ECB Reporters' Network supported by Rothesay
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Jannik Sinner was in a snoozy mood. He must have yawned three or four times while I was interviewing him, which does not say much for the originality of my questions. But one subject sparked his interest. Asked about his friendship with Jack Draper – the latest British hero to enter the labyrinth of Wimbledon – Sinner perked up noticeably and leaned forward. From the beady look in his eye, he could have been preparing to return serve. 'You're lucky to have a player like him,' said Sinner, the top seed and world No 1. 'After Andy [Murray], they need someone big. He [Draper] is someone big, and he's someone who is going to stay there for a very, very long time.' It was an unusually emphatic statement from Sinner, a low pulse-rate sort of fellow who is as understated as the young Bjorn Borg. But then his relationship with Draper is clearly heartfelt. 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Remember McEnroe versus Connors? Or how about Sampras v Agassi? During this week's interview, Sinner revealed that he had also sat down with Novak Djokovic after their initial competitive encounter – which came in Monaco in 2021 – to ask for a detailed assessment of his own game. As Sinner recalled, 'Novak said, 'Yeah, good player, but you were too predictable at times.'' It was generous of Djokovic to offer such assistance, and arguably he has paid the price, with Sinner now leading their head-to-head by five wins to four. As Sinner's coach Darren Cahill put it in a recent interview, 'it [the meeting] left a big impression on a young player. For Jannik, it was 'Let's start doing these changes.'' When you combine the unrivalled depth and pace of Sinner's bread-and-butter groundstrokes with the additional grace notes he has developed in recent years – touch volleys, drop shots and slices – you come away with a kind of tennis Terminator: a T1000 who just keeps rumbling forward, no matter what you throw at him. There is only one other player who can stand up to such relentless bombardment. Three weeks ago, in the French Open final, Sinner's fast-twitch style collided with the wizardly improvisations of his greatest rival Carlos Alcaraz. They battled for almost six hours, and although Sinner lost, the margin of victory was just a single inch: the overlap between Alcaraz's forehand and the baseline on one of Sinner's three unconverted match points. 'I went home with my parents, with my friends,' said Sinner, when asked how he had processed that gigantic let-down. 'We had barbecues, played some ping pong, you know, trying to forget. But it was a very special match. The audience need rivals. It's part of history now, and I'm very happy that I was part of it.' We were speaking on the Wimbledon terrace, high above Court No 3. As I fired off questions, Sinner lounged in a comfy chair, his long body stretched almost parallel to the ground like human spaghetti. All elbows and angles on the court, he is contrastingly languid off it: a man saving his energy for when he needs it most. Sinner is an unusual Italian, with his red hair and pale skin, but then he grew up in South Tyrol – the Alpine skiing paradise where German is the first language. The last time we met, during 2023's World Tour Finals, I asked him whether he empathised with Andy Murray in the sense of being an outsider in his own country. But he shot me down quickly, pointing out that he had left home aged 13 to train with coaching savant Riccardo Piatti at an Italian academy near Monaco. 'I had all Italian people surround me,' he insisted, 'so I feel now fully Italian.' As we chatted this week, three members of the Lavazza team looked on. The Italian coffee brand is proud to have had an association with Sinner since 2018, when he was just another teenage wannabe. And the Lavazza family were more than happy to assist him directly in February, at the start of his three-month doping ban. The family house in Monaco happened to boast a 'backyard clay court' – in Cahill's words – which was one of the few places where Sinner was allowed to train. Only in April did the terms of his suspension relax, whereupon Draper's arrival for a training block coincided with an upgrade to the famous Monte Carlo Country Club. 'We asked Jack if he could come,' Sinner recalled of that week, 'because I needed some feedback from the best players in the world. And it was good for me to see I was still quite rusty. Day by day, we tried to work on things, trying to go to Rome with certain feelings. After some time, we found it.' 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