Gibson hails return of world’s-best Root as Yorkshire face Bristol test

Root is pencilled in to bat at No 4 with Harry Brook at No 5 and captain Shan Masood at No 3 as Yorkshire field a line-up of international standard.

Gibson said the boost provided by Root’s availability speaks for itself with the former Test captain set to play five of the next six Championship games before the Test summer starts on July 10.

“It’s fantastic to have Joe back,” said Gibson, the Yorkshire head coach.

“He’s the best batsman in the world, and to have the best batsman in the world playing for Yorkshire can only be a good thing.

“I say this all the time, especially with somebody like Joe Root, but it’s not just the performances that players like that bring, it’s their presence around the group and what they add to the group, the value that they bring to the younger players especially.

“To have somebody like Joe is a fantastic thing all round, and hopefully we can both benefit in terms of him getting runs and confidence for Test cricket, and ourselves in terms of him helping us to win games that would put us in a really good position going into the middle part of the season.”

Yorkshire will be strong favourites to beat a Gloucestershire side who finished bottom of Division Two last season with no wins from 14 games.

However, Gibson stressed that Yorkshire can take nothing for granted despite the presence of the England pair.

“When people say we’ve got Brook and we’ve got Root and therefore we should win, that’s not how it works,” he said.

“We still have to go and play some good cricket, and we still have to take 20 wickets to win the game.

“It’s nice to have those guys, of course, but everybody else will have a role to play, a part to play, in whether we’re going to win the game or not, and we still have to perform out in the middle.

“But it’s going to be great to have them around.”

Gibson said there is “never any ego” with Root and Brook, the latter having scored an unbeaten hundred in Yorkshire’s opening round draw at home to Leicestershire on his return to cricket after a family bereavement.

Both are as popular within the camp as they are highly respected, inspiring as much through their attitude and character as through their performances.

“There’s never any ego with those guys,” said Gibson.

“When Joe comes back to Yorkshire, he’s sending me messages along the lines of ‘Gibbo, can I do anything? What do you want from me?’, that sort of stuff. There’s no ego involved there, and Harry’s just the same.

“The joy of sitting down and watching those two bat together, at some point hopefully, that would be very special for our players to witness. Both of them love coming back to Yorkshire and playing for Yorkshire, and hopefully they will continue to have a positive impact.”

Yorkshire’s first priority will be just to get out o n to the field after the corresponding game this time last year was abandoned without a ball being bowled.

Gloucestershire suffered the same fate in their scheduled opening match this season at Derby, although the forecast for the coming days looks decent enough.

“We all know what happened at Bristol last year,” said Gibson. “We went down there and we never bowled a ball, and it was bright sunshine for four days.

“There’s been a lot of weather around again already this year, and everybody is affected by the weather of course.

“Last year, we lost 30 per cent or whatever of our overs in the County Championship season, so we’re hoping that we’re not going to be sitting around for four frustrating days.”

Gibson was generally satisfied with last week’s display against Leicestershire.

The visitors scored 354 in their first innings before Yorkshire made 264-6 declared, Leicestershire reaching 26-0 in the second innings of a soggy affair.

“There was a lot of frustration with the weather but we got some time in the middle,” said Gibson.

“Our bowlers managed to get at least one good innings into them and I thought we bowled well in patches, but there’s also some stuff that we’ll have to do better going forward.

“When we batted, Harry Brook made it look easy and Adam Lyth made an excellent hundred as well."

Yorkshire (from): Bean, Brook, Coad, Fisher, Hill, Lyth, Masood (captain), Milnes, Moriarty, Revis, Root, Tattersall, Thompson.