Leading by 141 overnight, with three wickets in hand, Yorkshire resumed after a three-hour delay hoping to answer captain Andrew Gale’s call for a 200-run lead that would have meant, in the captain’s words, “game on”. Instead, Warwickshire mopped up the last three wickets for the addition of 32 runs in 11.5 overs.
Ryan Sidebottom was first to go, a yorker removing his off stump to give the impressive Chris Woakes his first five-wicket haul of the season.
Steve Patterson added 23 in nine overs with Andrew Hood before nudging a steepling lifter from Boyd Rankin to short leg and Jack Brooks lasted two balls before edging another climbing delivery to leg gully.
That left Warwickshire chasing 174 from 36 overs but Varun Chopra and Ian Westwood had faced only two overs when the rain began.
“It’s an opportunity lost,” Chopra said. “If the weather had held out we would probably have been favourites. We’re not in the position we would have liked but if we win four of our last five games we will have the same number of points that won the title last year.”
At the moment, though, while they are clear of the bottom three teams – Derbyshire, Surrey and Somerset, who drew with Nottinghamshire in part thanks to an unbeaten 70 from Nick Compton – they are 37 points off the top.
For Yorkshire there is every reason for confidence. “Three wins out of five would take us home and we’ll definitely be in the mix with two more,” Gale said.
“We performed well on the first two days but not on the third morning. I can’t put my finger on why and if we’re going to win the championship we need to have less of those sessions. But it was probably a bit of a wake-up call, which is not necessarily a bad thing.”
