Andrew Gale backs Yorkshire captain Gary Ballance to resume Test career

Is Gary Ballance in the form of his life?

“Yes,” insisted the Yorkshire first-team coach, who said that he would be “surprised” if Ballance is not selected for the first Test against South Africa at Lord’s on July 6.

Ballance, who will play the first two days of the Championship game against Surrey before leaving to lead the England Lions against the tourists in Worcester, is the country’s leading English batsman with 815 Championship runs at an average of 101.

Whatever one’s opinion of England’s decision to withdraw him halfway through the Yorkshire match so that he can face the South African quicks in the Lions game in what is effectively a trial run, there is consolation at least in the fact that Ballance is once more back in the international picture, eight months after losing his Test spot.

“I’ll be surprised if he’s not picked in the first Test,” said Gale. “I think he’s ready to step up and now’s the perfect time for him to play for England again.

“When they picked him last year, he wasn’t playing that well; he’d scored a hundred against Middlesex at Scarborough, but, up to that point, he hadn’t been playing all that well.

“But you can see the consistency that he’s had lately and he’s hardly failed for us this year, and he’s ready to play for England again.”

On England’s decision to allow him to play only on the first two days of the Yorkshire game, Gale said diplomatically: “This has happened quite a lot in the past when Jonny Bairstow or Tim Bresnan were left out of a Test match and would then come straight back up the motorway and play for us during the second or third day.

“It’s not ideal, but Gary is our captain, our best player at the moment, so if we get him for two days then we see that as a bonus.”

Bresnan will captain the team when Ballance departs, with 18-year-old batsman Harry Brook perhaps the likeliest candidate to replace Ballance as a fully participating substitute on days three and four.

Brook impressed with 38 on debut against Middlesex at Lord’s last week, where he appeared unfazed and looked the part.

“The only positive in a poor overall batting performance, I guess, was the way that Harry Brook played in the first innings,” said Gale.

“I thought he played nicely against a good Middlesex bowling attack and showed that he’s capable.”

Yorkshire’s collective batting troubles continued, however, as they were bowled out for 208 and 174 to lose by an innings and 64 runs.

Once again, Gale finds himself demanding improvement.

“We’ve spoken about it for a while but we need to start batting better as a unit,” he said. “We need to get back to basics, reacting to the ball, and if we can improve our batting then results will look after themselves.

“We’ve bowled well as a unit all year and if we can put the batting in place, then we’ll start to dominate games. We were well below-par at Lord’s, but we’ve got to move on from that and we want to get right back on track.”

Commenting on the pink-ball experiment in this week’s match, Gale said: “It’s a bit of an unknown to all of us. We’ve previously played a pink-ball game in Abu Dhabi, but it’s going to be different as the conditions here are a lot different. Nobody really knows how it will go.”