YORKSHIRE were forced to spend a frustrating day watching it rain yesterday instead of making further progress towards beating bottom-of-the-table Derbyshire in the Championship match at Headingley, writes David Warner.

They left the rain-soaked ground still confident that they can win the game and pick up a maximum 24 points but they needed a substantial improvement in today's weather to help them.

If the weather relents, Derbyshire will resume their first innings on 247-7 and still requiring 174 to avoid the follow-on.

Yorkshire will not expect to meet too much resistance from the tail which they will hope to dispose of in quick time in order to give themselves a chance of bowling out Derbyshire for a second time before the end of the final day.

At the moment, Yorkshire have seven bonus points and they will add a further point if they can end Derbyshire's first innings. That would give them 12 points from a drawn match which would ensure that they stay in the thick of the promotion race.

Yesterday's completely blank day was Yorkshire's third of the season - and all of them have been at Headingley. There was a washout on the first day of the Championship match against Somerset in April and the opening day of the game with Leeds-Bradford Universities Centre of Excellence was also a blank but Yorkshire managed to go on and win both fixtures.

Updated: 10:43 Friday, July 29, 2005