YORKSHIRE will rest Jack Brooks during a hectic week of Twenty20 cricket as they look to preserve their leading wicket-taker for the final six LV= County Championship matches.
Brooks will miss some, if not all, of the Vikings’ five NatWest Blast matches in eight days, starting with tomorrow’s sold out Roses clash with North Division pacesetters Lancashire at Headingley.
The 30-year-old new ball bowler has 42 Championship wickets to his name, more than anybody in Division One.
But he has looked tired during the last two matches against Sussex and Warwickshire even though he took seven wickets in the two fixtures combined, including the 200th in his firstclass career at Edgbaston on Tuesday.
“Jack’s hitting a wall now,” said captain Andrew Gale. “We’re probably going to leave him out of some of the Twenty20s over the next week or so.
“We’ve got maybe a tenday break from Championship cricket with five Twenty20s, so it’s the ideal opportunity now to let him put his feet up because he’s going to be a big asset for us in the second half of the year.
“We’re going to need him. You’ve seen what he can do. He’s one of those bowlers who one spell can bowl a bag of rubbish and the next he comes on and gets three wickets in an over.
“He might play every Championship game from now on in. The schedule actually calms down a bit now Championship wise.
He probably won’t play every Twenty20, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to win. It’s an ideal time to give him a rest.”
Since moving from Northamptonshire ahead of 2013, Brooks has taken 76 wickets in 21 Championship matches, including 34 from 11 last season.
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