Yorkshire suffered another embarrassing Clydesdale Bank 40 defeat to the Netherlands at the VRA ground on the outskirts of Amsterdam.
After May’s narrow loss at Headingley, Andrew Gale’s men were bowled out for only 123 yesterday as their batting and fielding lurched between the shocking and the ridiculous.
Adil Rashid top-scored with 43 off 59 balls, and he was one of only four players to reach double figures.
Adam Lyth, Jonny Bairstow, Ajmal Shahzad and Rich Pyrah were all guilty of playing poor shots on a slow pitch which provided a little bit of help off the seam for the bowlers.
And Gary Ballance and last man Iain Wardlaw, in particular, were both run out in farcical fashion.
Ballance backed up too far when Rashid drove firmly to mid-on and Wardlaw was caught short as he and David Wainwright failed to communicate when two runs should have been a certainty.
Captain Gale then dropped three catches that should all have been taken, with home skipper Peter Borren hitting a crucial 34 off 26 balls to help clinch a four-wicket win with 12-and-a-half overs to spare.
Director of professional cricket Martyn Moxon fumed: “Our batting performance was unacceptable. It was a catalogue of errors. The basic principles of how we play one-day cricket just weren’t observed.
“We felt that 180 to 190 on this pitch would have been a competitive score.”
The visitors only hit five fours and one six as they failed to find their timing on the same pitch on which Sussex had scored 271-2 from their 40 overs 24 hours earlier.
Ballance got the first four in the 15th over, Rashid hit the other four and Shahzad crunched a huge straight six out of the picturesque ground off the left-arm spin of Pieter Seelaar.
Mudassar Bukhari, the manager of the Burger King restaurant at Schiphol Airport, was the pick of the home bowlers, getting Lyth, Pyrah and Ben Sanderson on the way to figures of 3-28 from eight overs.
Borren and Australian overseas seamer Shane Mott also picked up two each.
Although there were stages when Yorkshire looked like they could get out of jail, particularly when the Dutch were 77-4 and struggling against spin duo Wainwright and Rashid, their fielding was shoddy.
Wainwright was the pick of the bowlers with 2-27, while Shahzad also picked up two.
But captain Gale had a day to forget.
He dropped pinch-hitter Bukhari twice, a steepler at cover off Sanderson’s bowling and a flat one above his head in the same position off Wardlaw.
He then dropped Michael Swart off Rashid’s leg-spin at mid-wicket, although that was the toughest of the three chances.
“The bowlers tried hard, and we had opportunities which we missed,” added Moxon. “But the batting performance was at times embarrassing. I’m deeply disappointed with that side of our performance.”
The White Rose county, who flew straight to Southampton last night, will have to pick themselves up quickly for tomorrow’s LV= County Championship clash with Hampshire at the Rose Bowl.
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