UNTIL last weekend, Martyn Moxon held the distinction of being Yorkshire's third heaviest scorer in Sunday League cricket with a total of 4,128 runs at the respectable average of 30.57.

But after the match at Durham he found himself unceremoniously dumped into fifth position as both David Byas and Richard Blakey leapfrogged above him.

The captain's unbeaten 79 moved him up two slots and gave him 4,170 runs while Blakey's perky 25 not out took him to 4,157 runs. Top of the Sunday list, and likely to remain there, is Geoff Boycott with 5,051 runs, followed by John Hampshire with 4,505.

With only 13 runs between them, Byas and Blakey are now involved in a battle royal to determine which of them will hold the higher place at the end of the season, when the curtain will have to be brought down on the current Sunday records.

This is because the top nine teams in the League table will next summer form the First Division of the National League with the bottom nine being in the Second Division.

Of the two players, one must favour Byas to finish in the higher position because he either opens or comes in at No 3, while Blakey has scored the bulk of his runs batting in the middle order, which is an outstanding achievement.

Byas did open on a regular basis until well into last season when he gave the job to Michael Vaughan.

Vaughan partnered Craig White, who for a while had made a big success of Byas's experiment of letting him open the innings - the highpoint being his 148 against Leicestershire at Grace Road which is Yorkshire's biggest individual one-day innings.

But Yorkshire need an experienced batsman to give shape to the innings at the start and with White unable to find his batting form so far this season, there are few other realistic alternatives to the captain.

Anthony McGrath, of course, is Vaughan's opening partner in the championship, but he has looked much happier coming in at No 5 on Sundays and until a couple of recent failures he was among the leading scorers in the country.

So it's carry on captain as Yorkshire go into the second half of their Sunday League programme in joint top place with Lancashire who have a game in hand over their White Rose rivals. If these two old antagonists stay at the top, what an occasion it will make the AXA day-night match between them at Headingley on Monday, August 24.

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