Warwickshire settle for draw with Yorkshire

[dutchman]

LV County Championship Division One, Edgbaston

Yorkshire 281 & 385-8 dec drew with Warwickshire 318 & 214-3

Warwickshire 9pts, Yorkshire 8pts



Jim Troughton and Shivnarine Chanderpaul hit half-centuries as title challengers Warwickshire secured a draw with relegation-threatened Yorkshire.

Gary Ballance (111) completed his first Championship ton for the Tykes and Adil Rashid hit 82 as Yorkshire, 319-5 overnight, declared on 385-8.

Set 349 to win, a Bears win looked unlikely as they reached 134-3 at tea.

But a stand of 125 between Troughton (62no) and Chanderpaul (56no) took them to 214-3 before bad light ended play.

The result lifts Warwickshire three points above Lancashire into second place in the County Championship, trailing leaders Durham by seven points.

But both the Bears and the Red Rose have a game in hand on Durham, with Warwickshire entertaining Nottinghamshire and Lancashire hosting Hampshire next week.

Second-placed Yorkshire, meanwhile, remain deep in trouble as they are 14 points from safety with only one game - a home clash with Somerset - to play.

They will need more of the fighting spirit shown by Ballance, who had previously passed 50 eight times in the Championship this season, and Rashid, whose stand of 188 was a sixth-wicket record for Yorkshire against Warwickshire.

Yorkshire got off to the perfect start with the ball as Varun Chopra edged Ajmal Shahzad's first delivery, but Ian Westwood and William Porterfield put on 82 for the second wicket before falling in quick succession.

Troughton and Chanderpaul, who had scored centuries in his previous two innings against the Tykes, ensured defeat was out of the question and upped the tempo to leave Warwickshire needing 135 from 20.4 overs to win before the umpires took the teams off.