THERE were in excess of 2,000 spectators, not at all a bad crowd for a cool, grey day at Derby yesterday, and a fair few of the cars in the fields beyond the boundary bore Yorkshire number plates.

Already making the pace in the championship, David Byas and his team deserve their travelling support. They are more or less certain to qualify for the quarter- finals of the Benson & Hedges Cup after keeping their 100 per cent record comfortably intact with a 36-run win achieved mainly by means of a masterly 102 not out by Darren Lehmann.

Lehmann passes the test of an overseas player: one who is a potential match-winner in every game. Yorkshire's committee had to wrestle a little with their consciences when they asked him to come back this year after taking over from Michael Bevan during last season's Australian tour, originally only to keep the seat warm for his fellow left-hander. But he was so successful on the field and so popular off it, they had little choice.

Bevan is rated by his Australian team-mates the best one-day batsman in the world so it is high praise to say that he could not have played any better than Lehmann did here on a slow, seaming pitch.

Derbyshire too often gave him width or aimed at his legs, but essentially it was he who dictated the pace, almost invisibly at first after coming in at 75 for two in the 18th over.

He hit only one four in his fifty off 63 balls and gave only a half-chance at 32 when an edge glanced the gloves of Karl Krikken, standing up to the shrewd medium-paced swingers of Paul Aldred.

Byas and Anthony McGrath, who later held three excellent catches, had laid a solid base for their star performer after Dominic Cork had found a good, late outswinger for Michael Vaughan.

There was, however, no zip about Cork's bowling on so sedate a pitch to excite the watching England coach, David Lloyd, and he will have noted instead that McGrath is still improving, Paul Hutchison still swinging the ball, Craig White still chipping in valuably, Darren Gough still full of beans, and Chris Silverwood still taking wickets.

Derbyshire have fewer options and Aldred, with an action uncannily similar to Cork's, was their most effective bowler but they all came alike to Lehmann. With his big backlift and free swing of the bat he seemed to have a shot and at least one run for almost every ball.

The most remarkable was the six with which he reached his 92-ball hundred, struck almost languidly over long-off from a ball by Cork deliberately aimed almost a foot outside his leg stump.

Derbyshire were never in serious touch with the challenge he set and they went rather colourlessly to their third consecutive defeat. The experimental opening pair were all at sea, which was exactly what was not needed.

Kim Barnett, still the best batsman in the side - at least until their own Australian, Michael Slater, is fit to bat again - did his best with an 83-ball fifty and Phil DeFreitas proved once more that his eye is still keen too.

Tim Tweats and Ben Spendlove, a 19-year-old from Trent College, showed, however briefly, that Derbyshire need not despair of their future, but Yorkshire are the side on the roll.