Head coach David Ripley said that he was proud of the way that the Steelbacks responded to their heavy defeat in Durham with a determined performance at Headingley.
As they had at the Riverside 24 hours earlier, the Steelbacks came up against one of the form teams in the Vitality Blast North Group, with the Vikings coming into the game in hot pursuit of a place in the competition’s knockout stages.
And the home pace attack showed their confidence in restricting the Steelbacks’ run rate in the opening half of their innings, David Willey, Jack Brooks, Steve Patterson and Jordan Thompson all bowling tidily to hold the visitors to 35-2 after seven overs.
A late burst, including a 41 from debutant Charlie Thurston, gave the Steelbacks some semblance of hope with 129-7, and when Richard Gleeson had opener Adam Lyth caught behind after just two balls a fightback flickered into life.
However the Yorkshire top order had plenty of firepower, including England men Willey and Jonny Bairstow, along with New Zealand star Kane Williamson, and it was the Kiwi whose unbeaten 52 off 44 balls steered his team home with eight balls to spare.
While the Steelbacks did fall to defeat Ripley said that the team can feel positive about their improved showing, especially in how they managed to stay on top of the dangerous Yorkshire batting lineup.
“Ultimately, we went down again,” said Ripley. “But the changing room feels a better place when you’ve fought hard. It needed a world-class player for Yorkshire to get them home.
“We scrapped really hard.
“You look back at the game, and we should have got 10-15 more runs. We just needed to find a way of getting to 140. That may have been enough. I’m proud of our performance tonight.”