Kuldeep Yadav had never taken ten wickets in a first-class match, and Essex lost by an innings in three days
Kuldeep Yadav’s 10 for 120 at Headingley is the first ten-wicket haul of his first-class career. Yorkshire beat Essex by an innings and 106 runs with a day of the match to spare.
Sep 11, 2026
Kuldeep Yadav has been a Test cricketer since March 2017 and a wrist-spinner people have been arguing about for longer than that, and until Thursday he had never taken ten wickets in a first-class match. He has one now. Four for 70 in the first innings, six for 50 in the second, and Essex were beaten by an innings and 106 runs at Headingley with a day of the game unused.
Ten for 120, and Essex never looked like surviving it
Yorkshire had posted 390, built on Dom Bess’s unbeaten 80 and half-centuries from Adam Lyth, Will Luxton and Matthew Revis. Matt Critchley took 5 for 85 for the visitors, which on a normal week would have been the story of the match. Essex then folded for 171. Kuldeep took 4 for 70 from 23 overs, Bess 3 for 36, and George Hill 3 for 12 from 9.4 overs.
The follow-on was enforced and Essex were 14 for 4 inside 12 overs. Hill had Dean Elgar caught behind and trapped Tom Westley lbw in the first nine overs, both for single figures. Kuldeep then took two in two balls just before lunch, Charlie Allison chipping to short mid-on where James Wharton took it, Critchley bowled through the gate next ball. The hat-trick ball missed, but the fifth wicket came at 26 when Luc Benkenstein edged to slip.
George Bell, on loan from Lancashire and playing his first innings for Essex, had made an unbeaten 64 in the first innings. He was back at the crease less than two hours later. He added 40 with Paul Walter and made 28 before Kuldeep had him caught behind playing back. Zaman Akhter was bowled offering no shot to a ball that turned a long way. Walter was stumped off Bess for 48, the top score of the innings, and Kuldeep bowled Sam Cook to end it on 113.
Hill’s second-innings figures deserve their own line: six overs, four maidens, two runs, two wickets.
Yorkshire are as good as safe, Essex are not
The 22 points push Yorkshire clear of the bottom two with two matches of the season left. A fourth win in 12 is not a campaign anyone at Headingley will frame, but it is almost certainly enough to keep them in Division One, and title-chasing Somerset arrive next.
Essex have the harder run-in. A sixth defeat leaves them looking over their shoulder, and Warwickshire visit Chelmsford next. Cook’s week captured the mood. Released from England’s Test squad, he joined the game midway through day two, never bowled a ball, and made 0 and 1.
What the ten-for settles, and what it does not
Kuldeep signed for Yorkshire in July on a two-part deal: five One-Day Cup games in late July, then three of the county’s final four Championship matches in September. The timing sat either side of India’s Test tour of Sri Lanka, and the point of it was never really county cricket.
Galle is the context. In the first Test there in August, Kuldeep bowled 25 overs across the two innings and took one wicket for 103. Manav Suthar, playing only his second Test, took 10 for 131 in the same match and India won by 165 runs. That is a difficult scoreline to argue with, and it is why Kuldeep spent September bowling at Essex rather than resting.
What Headingley showed is that the bowling still works. Three of his six second-innings wickets were bowled, which is the tell with Kuldeep: when the ball is coming out cleanly, batters play down the wrong line rather than nick off. It is the version that took 5 for 72 against England at Dharamsala in March 2024.
What it cannot settle is selection. He is 31, he has spent most of his career being picked when conditions suit and left out when they do not, and a ten-for in Division One does not change a pecking order that Suthar reordered in Galle. Yorkshire have two matches left. Kuldeep’s contract covers three of the last four, so there is at least one more chance to keep the argument going.