The last thing Phil Jaques did before returning to New South Wales at the weekend was to pick up a cheque for £1,000 which was his reward for finishing up as the second highest scorer in the group stages of the Twenty-20 Cup.

Jaques compiled 180 runs altogether and he'll be back at Headingley towards the end of next month when he replaces Darren Lehmann who will be playing for Australia in the ICC Champions Trophy in September.

It's not only in Twenty-20 cricket that Jaques has excelled for Yorkshire and he has notched well over 1,000 runs in first class and one-day games since arriving in mid-May.

Although Yorkshire's defeat by Durham at Riverside on Friday sent them crashing out of the Twenty-20 Cup they were generally good value for money and none more so than Ian Harvey who returned after a two-month lay-off with a hamstring tear to thrash Yorkshire's only century in the competition so far - 108 in the Roses clash.

Harvey emerged with the third best strike rate in the country, his aggregate of 122 runs coming off 67 balls to give him a strike rate of 182.09.

Yorkshire's Twenty-20 flop this year was Michael Lumb who could only muster 17 runs in five innings.

LUMB'S fortunes improved somewhat - even if Yorkshire's didn't - in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy semi-final clash with Gloucestershire over the weekend when the absence of regular captain Craig White following a cartilage operation led to Lumb opening the batting for the first time.

The left-hander responded with a cleanly struck 34 and watching him make his runs was father, Richard, the former Yorkshire opener, who is on a visit to England from his home in Johannesburg. Lumb senior has his own fond memories of the Bristol ground because in a Championship match there in 1975 he was one of three Yorkshire centurians in the same innings, the others being Geoff Boycott and John Hampshire.

There have been only two occasions in Championship matches since then that Yorkshire have achieved a similar feat. One of them was against Leicestershire at Headingley in 2001 when the batsmen involved were Wood, Darren Lehmann - and Michael Lumb!

GLOUCESTERSHIRE'S easy five-wicket win over Yorkshire showed that they are still expert practitioners in the art of one-day cricket, even though some of their players are reaching the end of their careers and Jack Russell is no longer there behind the stumps.

There was no keeping Russell away from the match, however, and there was no doubt, either, that he has become a cult hero among the Gloucestershire fans.

He's had a smart haircut since shedding that battered floppy sunhat which the club failed in banning him from wearing, and he looked very dapper last week when he cut the blue tape at Bristol's County Ground to open the new Jack Russell Suite.

"You usually have to be dead and gone before having buildings named after you and I have to keep pinching myself to make sure I am still alive," he said.