Broad Trap Nets Vaughan

Michael Vaughan has one last chance to play an innings of substance before the Lord's Test against New Zealand. The frustrations that bedeviled him in New Zealand remain after his England team-mate, Stuart Broad, tempted him yesterday into a careless dismissal that left him throwing his head back in disbelief.

England captains bent upon restating their authority are not expected to fall pulling to deep square-leg. Broad set two leg side boundary catchers in his first over and Vaughan pulled him confidently for six. He gave him another short ball in his second over, Vaughan swiveled more cautiously and found the stooping Samit Patel at deep square-leg.

The 33-year-old was appalled and will be desperate for the rain to relent and allow a second innings; Broad, who bowled only so-so for his three top-order wickets, must have felt as tricksy as Ian Botham in his pomp. Vaughan labored for more than three hours and looked in excellent trim but to do the hard yards and then be dismissed for 42 - from 127 balls - will encourage those who have begun to question his ability to reproduce the major innings of the past. He has not scored a championship hundred for Yorkshire for five years, though he has not played all that much.

When Jacques Rudolph, the South African, signed for Yorkshire as a Kolpak last season, the ECB led the cries of disapproval. Now with the advent of Indian Twenty20 and players flitting here and there, the fact that Rudolph has not only returned for a second season but plans to stay for all of it makes him seem like a county loyalist.

Rudolph's unbeaten 104, in more than five hours, would have been watched by the Yorkshire cognoscenti a year ago with a mild sense of shame. Now he is revered as a nice, dependable lad. He defends stoically and drives elegantly but, had their been any justice, Ryan Sidebottom would have dismissed him with the second new ball.

Headingley has never been an attractive ground. David Lloyd, in an inspired piece of TV commentary, once observed rain tippling upon the red-brick terraces outside the ground and breathed reverently: "Gateway to the Dales."

But the £20m pavilion, which has just been submitted to Leeds City Council for planning approval, could change all that. The crystalline structure, with an undulating roof, resembles a group of lanterns and is quite unlike anything Yorkshire cricket has ever imagined. It is being largely funded by Leeds Met University and is proof of how rapidly English cricket is evolving. Imaginative design does not stop at Lord's.