Yorkshire spent the early part of the week-end re-charging their batteries after two energy sapping Twenty20 Cup matches on consecutive nights had left them drained and with very little to show for their efforts.

They know they must be back on full power if they are to beat Lancashire and Durham this week and make it into the draw for the quarter finals.

Even non-partisan followers of Twenty20 cricket - if any exist - must have some sympathy for Yorkshire after they featured in the two highest scoring matches ever seen in the competition against Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, yet somehow contrived to lose both of them.

An aggregate of 417 runs gushed from the match at Trent Bridge and 432 at Headingley and although Yorkshire's batsmen were up for it the bowlers were not quite in the same league.

Nobody suffered worse than Anthony McGrath who must almost have preferred spending much of his recent time watching England play from inside the dressing room rather than being flogged to death.

In 5.5 overs in the two matches McGrath travelled for 86 runs, his leg-stump medium pacers proving to be canon fodder for Mark Ealham and Darren Maddy.

The least punished of the bowlers turned out to be Steve Kirby who only played because of the knee injury picked up by Matthew Hoggard. Kirby's eight overs cost him 59 runs and he bagged four wickets.

There can be little complaint about the batting after the 200 mark was topped in both games and Matthew Wood and Phil Jaques can each feel aggrieved at not quite making it to the century mark.

Wood, who carried his bat against Notts, needed to hit the last ball of the innings from former teammate Ryan Sidebottom for six but could only manage a two, while Jaques was caught on the boundary edge in the Leicestershire match for 92 in the final over.

It would be fitting if Jaques could this week become the first Yorkshire player to make a century in Twenty20 cricket because he is due to return to New South Wales on Sunday, provided nothing happens in the meantime to either Darren Lehmann or Ian Harvey.

Jaques has done more than could ever have been expected of him during the eight weeks he has been over here as temporary cover for his two fellow Australians and he will be welcomed back in August before the ICC Champions Trophy gets under way.

Was another Aussie, Leicestershire's Brad Hodge, trying to start a new Twenty20 fad when he batted for most of the time at Headingley with his jockstrap and white protector on the outside of his flannels?

Apparently not.

Early in his innings the elastic went in his under-cover jockstrap and because it would have wasted too much time to change it he just fitted the replacement over his trousers. It may have made Hodge look macho - but it would have provided the bowlers with a good target to aim at had they been able to bowl anything straight.

It's impossible to get away from one-day cricket at the moment but memories of the game's glorious past were stirred at Headingley last Sunday when Hutton and Compton were competing on the Test ground again.

Not Len and Denis, alas, but their grandsons, Ben and Nick, who were both playing for Middlesex Crusaders, Ben captaining his county which is something Len never did at Yorkshire.

Ben is very much aware of the family link with Pudsey, where Sir Leonard was born, and Pudsey St Lawrence, where he developed into the country's greatest batsman.

On the day before the match Ben got teammate, Paul Hutchison, who previously played for Yorkshire and also grew up at Pudsey St Lawrence, to take him to the ground where the second team were in action.

"I am delighted that Ben shows such a keen interest in Pudsey and that the Hutton links with the cricket club remain so strong," said St Lawrence president, Keith Moss, the former Yorkshire chairman.

It was the first time Ben had been at the ground since he was a boy in 1991 when the whole Hutton family attended the opening ceremony of the Sir Leonard Hutton gates.