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Picture by Jed Leicester\/MCC. Ben Cliff celebrates the wicket of Aaryan Sawant at Lord\u2019s today. He spoke to the media this evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today at Lord\u2019s definitely fell into the \u2018bittersweet\u2019 category for in-form Yorkshire quick Ben Cliff. A defeat to Middlesex was clearly a frustration. But four wickets on his first ever visit to this venue was clearly something to remember.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never even watched a game here before,\u201d said Cliff, whose White Rose side were beaten by 35 runs against their fellow Metro Bank One-Day Cup knockout hopefuls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a couple of others like that as well. Luxy is one, Jack White another. We\u2019d never stepped foot in the place, so it was pretty special to be fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not walked into a venue with a big smile on my face like I did this morning, thinking, \u2018This is Lord\u2019s, it\u2019s pretty cool\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
That stuff out of the way, Cliff bowled impressively for 4-39 from eight overs to help bowl Middlesex out for 246.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Yorkshire then slipped from 100-2 to 106-6 and later 211 out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d have probably been the happier side going into half-time, and obviously we were confident of knocking that total off,\u201d Cliff continued. \u201cSo it\u2019s obviously disappointing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always going to be difficult losing wickets in the middle like we did. But credit to Zafar Gohar (four wickets), he came on and took some big wickets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they were maybe a little bit below par with the bat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a bit slow and spun a touch, but there were no demons in the pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yorkshire are still well placed for a top-three finish and knockout cricket, albeit they will realistically have to win their last two games to have a chance of finishing top of Group B for a home semi-final.<\/p>\n
They face Derbyshire at Scarborough on Friday bidding for a fifth win in seven and then travel to Chelmsford to face Essex next Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a great run of form,\u201d said Cliff. \u201cWe\u2019ve won some gritty games, we\u2019ve won some glamorous games, and I think we\u2019ve put all the pieces together ready for the back end.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we can put in two good performances. We\u2019ve certainly shown we\u2019re capable of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before we finish talking to Cliff about his own form, which has seen him take 15 wickets and be the leading wicket-taker in the competition, let\u2019s chat about teenaged team-mate Will Bennison, who was excellent for 63 today.<\/p>\n
The England Under 19 scored his maiden first-team fifty and top-scored for the White Rose.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe played beautifully,\u201d said Cliff. \u201cVery mature innings for a young lad starting his career, and it\u2019s something we all knew he\u2019s got in his locker.\u201d<\/p>\n
As aforementioned, Cliff now sits top of the leading wicket-taker\u2019s list in this competition with 16 and has taken a trio of four-wicket hauls over the last couple of weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the 23-year-old added: \u201cTo be honest, I think this role is suiting me at the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, I see myself as a new-ball bowler, but I\u2019m coming on first-change and trying to do that job of ruffling a few people up, just being aggressive and hitting a good length.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019ve been getting rewards from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it does help as well when the likes of Whitey, Coady and Hilly are bowling like they are and batters seem to be going nowhere against them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I come on and they just try and smack me!<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019ve got to do your job, and it\u2019s going nicely for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Picture by Jed Leicester\/MCC. Ben Cliff celebrates the wicket of Aaryan Sawant at Lord\u2019s today. He spoke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-725320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}