Promotion would be right up there for Ottis Gibson as he seeks fond Yorkshire CCC farewell
Yorkshire go into Thursday’s game against Northamptonshire at Headingley needing a maximum of 10 points to guarantee a top-flight return. They are 15 points above third-placed Middlesex, who face champions-elect Sussex at Hove.
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Hide Ad“I’ve done lots of special things in cricket,” said Gibson, who coached West Indies and South Africa and had two stints as England bowling coach before joining Yorkshire in 2022.
“This was my first time coaching a county, so sometimes when I sit back and look at where I’ve gone in my coaching life, in an ideal situation, when you finish playing, you would coach a county first, you would cut your teeth at county level, and then you would go and do an international team, or whatever.
“I was lucky that I was able to finish playing, do a whole international cycle and then come back to county cricket.
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Hide Ad“For my first county, after the pain of being relegated in the first year (2022), to take the team back into the First Division would be right up there as far as achievements goes.”
Sussex top Division Two with 221 points, Yorkshire have 201 and Middlesex 186, with Sussex already up and Yorkshire and Middlesex battling it out over the last promotion place.
A side gains 16 points for a win, eight for a draw, and a maximum of eight first innings bonus points (five for batting for reaching 250, 300, 350, 400 and 450 inside the first 110 overs, plus three for bowling for taking three, six and nine wickets during that time).
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Hide AdIt means, by way of illustration, that Middlesex would need a maximum points haul (16 for the win, plus all eight bonus points) at Hove, and for Yorkshire to claim nine points or less, for Yorkshire to be edged out. The tie-breakers for sides finishing level on points are: most wins, fewest defeats, head-to-head (total points in games between the sides), total wickets, total runs.
With indifferent weather forecast, Yorkshire are firmly in the box-seat after a run of five wins in their last six games, a dramatic turnaround in fortunes after they went winless in their first seven matches.
At that stage, Yorkshire had won four of Gibson’s 34 Championship fixtures in charge, prompting the hierarchy, with a heavy heart, to decide that a fresh direction was necessary, with Yorkshire announcing at the start of last month that Gibson would be going at the end of the season.
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Hide AdAnthony McGrath, the former Yorkshire and England batsman, who is head coach and director of cricket at Essex, is thought to be the man whom Yorkshire would ideally like to replace Gibson.
All will be revealed, but Gibson is determined to sign off in style after stating following last week’s win against Glamorgan in Cardiff that he is “very disappointed” to be leaving, having walked into what was effectively a destroyed organisation after the cataclysmic events of the racism debacle.
“I like being a head coach,” he added. “I like the day-to-day of it, but also building a culture and so on, all the other stuff.
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Hide Ad“I can be a bowling coach anytime. I know what I’m doing when it comes to bowling coaching.
“When I came to Yorkshire, where Yorkshire were, and having to sort of repair a lot of damage and image and all that sort of stuff, and also build a culture within the dressing room, we’ve done that.
“Culture was the buzzword three years ago, and I’m happy to say that we’ve got a fantastic culture within our dressing room, where everybody is involved in helping each other to get better, and that is the reason why we’re playing the way we’re playing now.”
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