YORKSHIRE CARNEGIE'S sights are firmly set on revenge in tonight's Twenty20 Cup Roses humdinger against Lancashire Lightning at Headingley (5.40pm).
The White Rose men are still reeling from their abysmal six-wicket loss at Old Trafford on Tuesday, with the fixture planners having afforded them a chance of instantly squaring the ledger.
Yorkshire saw off their Red Rose rivals twice in the 20-o
vers format last term and with the bulk of a 12,200 capacity crowd baying for a home win tonight and the weather expected to be set fair, the hosts have a chance of immediate redemption.
Tim Bresnan – fresh from England duties – is set to feature, but wicket-keeper/batsman Gerald Brophy is still suffering from a thumb injury, which will be assessed this weekend.
Chief executive Stewart Regan said: "We're expecting a full house of 12,200. It's a slightly reduced capacity, but the ground will be full and the weather forecast is very good.
"We're hoping for a good night, although we'll need to play a bit better than we did on Tuesday.
"Last year (against Lancashire at home), we won in a reduced overs game and the ground was only half full.
"The year before that was a wash-out and the year prior to that (2006) we had a full house, it was a beautiful evening and we beat Lancashire to get through to the quarter-finals with Matthew Lumb scoring 90-odd."
Lancashire arrive at Headingley on the back of a sizzling start to the campaign, with Peter Moores' men having had five wins in their last six matches in all competitions.
The most recent arrived on Tuesday after Yorkshire produced a lamentable batting performance which saw them restricted to 105-8.
Lancashire polished off the target with the minimum of fuss, reaching 107-4 with a whopping four-and-a-half overs to spare.
And former Red Rose bowling ace Paul Allott, who is covering the game for Sky tonight, feels Yorkshire won't need telling twice that they will need to improve massively.
He said: "Yorkshire are going to have to improve. They'll realise that their performance wasn't good enough.
"They'll want to get through the group with the top three qualifying for the new English Premier League next year. That will be nagging away in the mind of every coach and player."
On the dangers posed by Yorkshire, Allott added: "(Anthony) McGrath is a useful performer and (Michael) Vaughan is looking like getting back to a useful seam of form and we've also got to be wary of (Jacques) Rudolph, who is top notch.
"For us, Ashwell Prince is obviously a quality act and the sort of guy you can build a team's innings around. (Francois) Du Plessis has also been in stunning form and scored two hundreds.
"we've also plenty of spin.
I don't know if Headingley takes spin, but we've two decent left-arm spinners in (Gary) Keedy and (Stephen) Parry, while Tom Smith and Kyle Hogg are playing well."
ADIL RASHID is expected to miss three County Championship matches and several Twenty20 games following his surprise England Twenty20 World Cup call-up for the injured Andrew Flintoff.
The leg spinner will be unavailable for Yorkshire's first-class matches with visiting Sussex and Somerset next month and for the trip to Worcestershire.
