Date-stamped : 26 May97 - 06:15
AXA Life League: Lehmann inspires Yorkshire

By Charles Randall at Taunton

Yorkshire (261-3) bt Somerset (260-7) by 7 wkts

YORKSHIRE look a good bet for at  least  one  of  the   one-  day
competitions,  judging  by their Darren  Lehmann-inspired victory
in the Taunton sunshine yesterday.

Lehmann`s   batting   looks    like    bringing     a     special
excitement  to  the    cricket    fields    of    England    this
summer.  Exaggeration? The left-hander can be judged only on what
he  is  producing, which yesterday happened to be 76 runs from 66
balls for  the pleasure of  a  large  crowd,   who   were  forced
to   accept  an important victory  for  Yorkshire, fellow  Sunday
League  title aspirants with Somerset.

Yorkshire owed nearly everything to the Australian  left-hander`s
panache,  with  Michael  Vaughan`s  66 in  65 balls an innings of
relative drabness.  Scoring  261  to  win  a Sunday  League  game
is rare enough, but here there were  almost four overs to spare.

Lehmann showed a glorious power  of  stroke  during   an  18-over
stand  of  134 with Vaughan and after that Yorkshire were able to
scamper home.

For Somerset, Richard Harden, in his third  season  of  a  steak-
for-fifties  sponsorship   from   a   local   butcher,  made  his
seventh half-century, on top of two hundreds,  in   less  than  a
month - which brought his runs in all cricket to 755.

He batted majestically yesterday,  occasionally  riding his  luck
for 85 in 77 balls.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/)

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