YORKSHIRE have every reason to feel grateful to their ‘Mr Reliable’ Tim Bresnan who has kept on his feet while those around him have gone down with a variety of injuries in the opening weeks of the season.

The dilution of their fast bowling attack was partly responsible for Yorkshire being outplayed in the Championship by both Nottinghamshire and Durham after they had started off so convincingly against Hampshire.

But their situation would have been even more difficult in both first class and one-day cricket, if 23-year-old Bresnan had not been on hand to take vital wickets and score useful runs.

If he can keep up the good work, then Bresnan could be in the frame for a one-day recall by England in the NatWest Series with New Zealand which kicks off in mid-June.

Although a relative youngster with his best years still ahead of him, the Pontefract born all-rounder seems to have been a part of the Yorkshire furniture for many years, having made his first team one-day debut in 2001 and his first class debut a couple of summers later.

Bresnan is a player who has emerged quietly rather than exploded on to the scene and certainly he will have a better grounding in the game than most of his young England rivals.

Luck has not always been on his side, however, and he has suffered his own fair share of injuries but he has fought his way back from them strongly.

Last winter, for instance, he was prevented from playing any cricket because of a series of different injury setbacks but he was fully fit for the start of the new season with Yorkshire and has not looked back since.

Bresnan emerged from the first three Championship matches as Yorkshire’s leading wicket-taker with 13 dismissals at only 18.46 runs apiece and after five Friends Provident Trophy games he was the joint leading bowler with nine victims at 18s.

He has also made his mark with the bat by scoring steadily in both competitions and often helping to ease Yorkshire out of a difficult situation.

If Bresnan is to make a career for himself with England then he must produce constantly good all-round form for Yorkshire because he is probably not quite sharp enough as a bowler to command a place solely on his wicket-taking abilities.

Two Championship centuries last season – and one for England Lions – show that he is a more than capable batsman but, here again, he will not be selected on that side of his game alone.

If Bresnan does go on to pick up an England one-day place it will seriously weaken Yorkshire’s resources but it will be no more than he deserves.

He was unfortunate enough to be first called upon by England for the one-day series against Sri Lanka in 2006 when the home side were thrashed 5-0 and no-one emerged with much credit. Bresnan played in four of those games and more bad luck followed when injury kept him out of most of the second half of the season with Yorkshire.

It would be foolish of England not to give Bresnan another chance at some time or other because his record at county level is too good to ignore.

How many other all-rounders in Yorkshire’s history have managed to score around 1,500 first class runs and take going on for 150 wickets at a similarly young age?

And don’t forget his one-day record at county level which currently stands at 957 runs and exactly 100 wickets – his 100th victim being Scottish Saltaires’ Australian opener, Ed Cowan, whom he had caught at mid-wicket by Jacques Rudolph shortly before Yorkshire completed a seven-wicket win in Edinburgh on Sunday in the Friends Provident Trophy.

It was another Australian, the better known Michael Di Venuto, who cooked Yorkshire’s goose in the Championship match against Durham at Riverside a few days earlier.

The left-hander’s sparkling 184 on a none-too-easy pitch upon which virtually every other batsman laboured led to Yorkshire going down by 295 runs inside three days, the third highest runs defeat in their history.

Di Venuto’s knock was the biggest by a Durham batsman against Yorkshire, overhauling the previous best of 155 by Ottis Gibson at Headingley Carnegie in 2006.

The grip which Di Venuto exerted on the match in the first innings made it a difficult Yorkshire debut for 19-year-old Sheffield-born fast bower, Ben Sanderson, particularly as he was forced to join the attack after some poor new ball opening by Darren Gough and Deon Kruis.

Yet Sanderson let nobody down and he did not crumble under pressure, bowling a good line outside off-stump and being rather unfortunate not to pick up a maiden wicket. He did not get another bite of the cherry in the second innings because Matthew Hoggard turned up from the Test match to take his place in the side – a switch which Hoggard was made to regret because Stephen Harmison went and broke his thumb while the Yorkshireman was batting and the injury will keep him out of all cricket for up to three weeks.

Sanderson did not make the squad for this week’s match with Surrey where Yorkshire went for another debutant in Oliver-Hannon Dalby, who used to play with Kirkburton.

The lanky 18-year-old – his birthday is on June 20 – got the vote because it was felt his extra height would be advantageous on the bouncier Oval pitch.

Hannon-Dalby was marked out by Geoff Boycott during the winter as one of Yorkshire’s most promising young fast bowlers, and it was fitting that he should make his county debut in the capital because when he was given a scholarship by Yorkshire in 2006 he was sponsored by the club’s London-based Southern Group.

The previous summer, he had an unforgettable experience when he was invited with other Academy players to bowl in the Headingley nets at the England, Australian and Bangladesh batsmen.

“It was a brilliant day,” said Oliver. “They were all very good with us and gave us every encouragement. Andrew Strauss was particularly friendly and so was Adam Gilchrist, who apologised for hitting us all over!”