Cricket: Derbyshire 216 & 366-7; Yorkshire 520
On a day when the daddy-longlegs' arrived at Derby by the squadron and trees were on the turn to stress the lateness of the season, the bottom club Derbyshire should on form have been heading for their ninth defeat of the campaign and Yorkshire to a sixth win and promotion. But in a year of cricketing fancy, few things have gone exactly to script.
The crane-fly in the ointment for Yorkshire over much of the day, as in the first innings, was the opener Steve Stubbings. His 91 contained 10 fours and held the Tykes at bay when several others offered resistance if not permanence.
With two full days in front of them, it was important that Yorkshire's skipper Craig White kept the close catchers in place, remained patient and picked the batsmen off. This he and his bowlers proceeded to do.
Only two wickets fell in the morning. Ben France gloved a rib-tickler from Tim Bresnan during an impressive first spell from the 20-year-old pace bowler and Christopher Bassano was leg before to Ian Harvey despite a large stride forward.
But then Hassan Adnan and the redoubtable Stubbings dug in. Adnan made good headway by playing his shots, greeting the leg-spinner Mark Lawson's introduction at the Grandstand End, 20 minutes before lunch, with licked lips and a full follow through.
Adnan fell lbw with the score on 103, walking across his stumps to Deon Kruis, making him the seamer's 59th Championship victim. Stubbings brought up his second fifty of the match with his fifth boundary from 137 balls faced.
Over the course of his innings the left hander systematically peppered the unattended third man boundary, offering support to Jon Moss, who himself hoisted Lawson twice into the members enclosure. The pair added 100 runs in 21 overs before Moss fell, playing all around a full ball from Mark Cleary for 49.
Lawson, the 19-year-old 'Warnabee', produced good deliveries to see off Luke Sutton and Graeme Welch, both caught at slip. His third wicket, to dismiss Stubbings, beat an ambitious drive and turned from the rough to flatten leg stump.
Sutton's wicket created the most touching moment of the day. As Derbyshire's captain left the field after his last home innings for the county, the supporters responded with the warmest of hands. After two seasons finishing in the wooden spoon position, few captains would have received such affection, but such is the measure of Sutton.
For Yorkshire it was also a case of heading on to bigger things. But as the floodlights sparked into life making the final session an inevitability, an unbroken seventh-wicket stand of 133 between Anthony Botha (98 not out) and Tom Lungley (34 not out) saw Derbyshire to the close at 366 for seven, a lead of 62.