Skipper's colour scheme

But McGrath is prepared for a tough scrap tomorrow when he leads out Yorkshire Phoenix in their opening match against strongly fancied Warwickshire Bears at Edgbaston.

"There is no doubt that we have under-performed in the National League but we have got a well-balanced side for one-day cricket and I think we stand a very good chance of finishing on top," said McGrath.

"Getting back into the top flight of the Championship at the first attempt is our main objective but that does not mean to say we are giving up on limited overs cricket.

"We want to win the National League and we are determined successfully to defend our title as Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy champions. It was a brilliant experience going to Lord's last season and we are all eager to repeat it this time.

"The new Twenty/20 Cup has got its critics but the ECB (the England and Wales Cricket Board) are anxious for it to succeed and I want us to stamp our authority on it. We shall certainly be taking it seriously and striving to make an impact."

Although Phoenix have been in Division One of the National League since the competition was split into two at the start of the 1999 season they have only once made a serious challenge for the title and that was in 2000 when they finished second to Gloucestershire, who pipped them by two points.

Last year a run of four consecutive defeats put Phoenix in serious danger of ending up in one of the three relegation places before they wriggled off the hook by winning their last two matches.

The penultimate game was at Edgbaston when they batted superbly under floodlights to bait the Bears and win by eight wickets. Yorkshire experimented by letting Michael Lumb open the innings for the first time and the left-hander responded with a dazzling 73.

It looks as if Lumb will hold on to the job and go in first with Matthew Wood who is determined to continue his vastly improved form.

Wood was cast into the wilderness last summer, both in the Championship and National League after a string of low scores, but he has worked hard on his game during the winter and last week at Headingley he bounced back with a faultless 157 against Northamptonshire.

Although Yorkshire fancy their chances tomorrow, they go into the game without four of their Test players in Australian Matthew Elliott, Michael Vaughan, Craig White and Matthew Hoggard.

Elliott, who plundered 266 runs with two centuries in five National League matches after joining up with Yorkshire last season, is still suffering a slight knee strain, while Hoggard picked up a stomach strain at Headingley last week.

White is on the road to recovery after his operation to remove part of a rib and Vaughan is barred from playing in this game by England.

But the world's top Test batsman last year marks his return next Wednesday in Yorkshire's Championship match against Hampshire at the Rose Bowl.

King Richard rules

RICHARD Blakey's 223 not out against Northamptonshire last weekend was a monumental effort by any standards but coming from a 36-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman it made it something really special.

If Blakey's place in the side was considered to be under increasing threat from the young pretender with the gloves, Simon Guy, then it certainly isn't now - at least not for the time being.

Guy, impatient for first team chances, has been told he will be given some outings this season, but when that happens there is every indication that Blakey will retain his place solely as a batsman.

When director of cricket Geoff Cope was put on the spot at Yorkshire's annual meeting about whether Guy was likely to be preferred to Blakey he said that it was hard at this stage to imagine dropping a batsman who had scored 1,041 first class runs only last season.

Now Blakey has made out an even stronger case for his retention with a stunning innings which re-wrote the record books and helped Yorkshire bag a maximum 22 points to get their Championship campaign off to the perfect start.

Blakey's previous double century for Yorkshire was made 16 years' ago when he was an outstanding England batting prospect and to be capable of weighing in now with a career-best score shows he has lost none of his powers.

There is no doubt that Blakey benefited last season by discarding some of his batting inhibitions and becoming more cavalier at the crease and he was encouraged to continue with this approach by Yorkshire's new batting coach, Kevin Sharp, the county's former nimble left-hander.

"Last summer I set out to play much more positively with the intention of trying to score off every ball and it worked out very well for me," said Blakey after his epic Northants' knock.

"I adopted a similar attitude in our pre-season matches and was supported to the hilt by Kevin who was keen for me to do my own thing.

"In the past the culture of the club has not always allowed you the freedom to play as you want but things are changing and there is now a greater willingness to let you sort out your own game.

"Sharpy has been a really big help and I think his appointment has brought in a breath of fresh air. The pre-season build up has been great, the atmosphere has been terrific and we have all enjoyed it.

"I realise that there is competition for my place but I have gone into the season with the determined attitude that I want to keep on playing and also knowing that I must keep on performing."

Darren Lehmann plundered 252 in the Roses match at Headingley three years' ago but the big individual scores for Yorkshire have generally cropped up in away matches.

Blakey now has the satisfaction of knowing he has made the biggest score by a Yorkshire-born player on a home ground since Vic Wilson plundered 230 against Derbyshire at Bramall Lane in 1952.

Any number of records fell as a result of Blakey's big blast which brought a total of 673-8 declared, including Yorkshire's previous highest team score against Northants of 584 for four declared at Harrogate in 1921. It was, in fact, the most runs that Northants have ever conceded in any match.

Yorkshire have only made three higher scores in their history - 887 v Warwickshire in 1896, 704 v Surrey in 1899 and 681-5 declared v Sussex in 1897, so their Northants score was their best in 104 years.

Classic cover drive

Congratulations to Michael Vaughan whose brilliant batting for England last year has earned him the distinction of becoming the first cricketer in the world to have his picture on the dust-jacket of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.

It is a little ironic that a player from Yorkshire CCC, which is steeped in the game's traditions, should be the one responsible for bringing about the first change since 1938 to the front cover of the Cricketers' Bible.

For the past 64 years, the front of the famous yellow jacket has reproduced the wooden panel of two top-hatted Victorian players, one wielding a bat and the other standing up to the stumps.

But in an attempt to update its image, the 2003 edition of Wisden, which is out next week, has sent the Victorians packing and replaced them with a photograph of a jubilant Vaughan scoring one of his dynamic Test centuries.

Even cricket fans outside Yorkshire will agree that nobody deserves his face on the front of Wisden more than Vaughan who was the world's top scorer in Test cricket in 2002 with 1,481 runs in 14 matches with six centuries at an average of 61.71.

Vaughan overtook Dennis Amiss's record for the most runs ever recorded in a calendar year by an English batsman and the only two Test stars to have scored more than Vaughan are Viv Richards with 1,710 in 1976 and Sunil Gavaskar with 1,555 in 1979.

Updated: 11:53 Saturday, April 26, 2003