Ottis Gibson has simple solution to Yorkshire CCC’s inability to win at Headingley

It was the fourth draw in as many Championship matches at Headingley this season, and the 10th in 14 since Ottis Gibson was appointed head coach in early 2022.

Now, as he prepares to leave the job with Yorkshire having won only one Championship game at Headingley in his three seasons in charge (against Worcestershire in the final fixture of last year), Gibson has ventured a simple solution to the ongoing problem - one uttered with an element of tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but which highlighted the West Indian’s obvious frustration.

“It seems like the next guy (coach) is going to have to think about playing more games at Scarborough,” said Gibson.

“We win at Scarborough, so maybe we should play more games there.

“I’ll put that in the suggestions box for the next guy, I think.”

In contrast to Headingley, where Yorkshire sign off this summer with a match against Northamptonshire from September 26, Scarborough has been a happy hunting ground in recent times.

Yorkshire have won six of their last nine Championship fixtures at North Marine Road, including on each of their last three visits.

Scarborough’s reputation as a results pitch, indeed, one of the best in the country, is well merited.

Only one of the last 20 Championship games staged there has failed to produce a positive result (last year’s weather-affected contest against Durham), a tribute to the work of groundsman John Dodds, who arrived at the club in 2011.

It is understood that, ideally, Scarborough would like to stage a minimum of three Championship matches each season as opposed to the present two.

There are strong rumours that York might get a Championship game next year, with a split of three Championship matches at Headingley, three at Scarborough and one at York a potential way forward for the home allocation.

Whatever the future holds for such venues and the Championship per se, the problem of how to get positive results at Headingley persists.

In remarkable contrast, 22 of the last 23 Headingley Tests have produced a positive result, with three of the last seven finishing inside four days, and two inside three days, which suggests that the problem is by no means unsolvable.

“Winning is hard at Headingley,” said Gibson, who takes his team to Leicester for the next Championship match that starts on Monday, which is followed by the penultimate fixture in Cardiff the following week.

“We’ve won one game in three years at Headingley, and that was the Worcestershire game at the end of last season when we contrived a finish.

“Even in that game, they set us something like 380 in 70 overs, and we ended up getting them, so that tells you that the pitch over the course of the four days didn’t deteriorate that much.”

The yawn-inducing Middlesex affair was further affected by two factors: the use of the Kookaburra ball instead of the English Dukes, and a hybrid surface that combined grass and artificial fibres in the latest experiments by the England and Wales Cricket Board.

The Kookaburra is being trialled in four Championship rounds this season in an effort to replicate the conditions found overseas in international cricket, with the Leicester match concluding the experiment from Yorkshire’s perspective.

Gibson spoke out earlier in the season against the Kookaburra – echoing the views, it seems, of many of the players.

The fact that fourth-placed Leicestershire – 18 points behind third-placed Yorkshire in the Second Division table – need to win to gatecrash the promotion picture should at least ensure that they try to produce a competitive surface.

“I’m not a fan of the Kookaburra ball,” said Gibson, who represented Leicestershire as a player, along with Durham and Glamorgan.

“I would scrap the experiment, to be honest. It doesn’t really add anything to the English game in my opinion.

“Batsmen make a lot of runs; Sam Northeast got 300 or something at Lord’s at the start of the year.

“The guys that are making the runs, and the way in which they’re making the runs, they’re not the guys who are on the tips of the England selectors’ tongues; they’re not the next ones in, so to speak.

“You also want to provide some entertainment to the people who come and watch.

"I don’t believe we got that (against Middlesex), and that was disappointing.”