“We’re not far away”: Gavin Hamilton on Yorkshire’s 2026 season

“For anybody who knows and sees cricket, you can just see it,” he says. “You get a feel for it and you can just see the way the players are competing, the way they handle themselves. In women’s and men’s cricket, the gap really isn’t that big (between Yorkshire and the top sides). It’s just those small decisions in games and getting them right at the right time. It’s just making sure that you identify game situations and swing them your way.”

Fine margins, in other words, as Hamilton describes them.

For him, it is no exaggeration to say that the women could “probably have won eight or nine more games than they actually did”. The men, he believes, would have won their Vitality Blast quarter-final against Somerset at Headingley “nine times out of ten” before Craig Overton’s remarkable innings and had “nothing to fear” had they got through to Finals Day. “It only takes one trophy to get things moving,” as he puts it.

At present, it is perhaps fair to say that the men are closer to that objective than their female counterparts, although no side boasting the likes of captain Lauren Winfield-Hill is there to make up the numbers. The women’s project, as it were, was always going to take time given the player drain that followed the decision to deny the club Tier 1 status at the start of the new era, with Yorkshire up against more experienced outfits further along in their journey. The women have competed, of that there is no doubt, with head coach Rich Pyrah overseeing some encouraging displays, but the Tier 1 honeymoon is over now.

“We know where we are on this journey in the women’s game,” says Hamilton, who describes Yorkshire as “tracking in the right direction” and halfway through a four-year cycle. “I’m very happy with the progress that we’ve made, but we’ve also got to start showing results. I think all the players know this, and Lauren has mentioned it herself. She said ‘now’s the time’ because this year has been a bit of a freebie, to be honest, our first in Tier 1. It’s been a great learning curve, and now myself, Rich and Lauren, we want to see progress turned into good performances, winning performances, consistently on the field.”

A similar challenge awaits the Yorkshire men, for whom the word “consistency” seems particularly appropriate. Under head coach Anthony McGrath and captain Jonny Bairstow, Yorkshire did the double over second-placed Somerset, for example, and beat another title contender in Nottinghamshire. Conversely, they lost to both relegated clubs, Hampshire and Leicestershire, and comprehensively as well.

“The performances against Somerset just highlight what could have been,” says Hamilton. “Then, for some reason, we went and lost against Hampshire and Leicester, which you can’t explain, although fair play to them. It was very up and down from our point of view, but I look at the Championship now and that gap from last year (to the top) is a lot smaller than it was. I think we’ve built momentum, and we’re not far away.”

More “fine-tuning”, in other words.

Yorkshire want to sign an overseas batsman to address their principal weakness in this season’s Championship - a failure to score enough runs and accumulate enough batting points. Remarkably, none of their regular top six averaged in the 30s. Only bottom club Hampshire and Essex, who were fortunate to survive, got fewer batting points.

“I think it’s there for all to see that we need to get more runs,” says Hamilton. “Another 15, 20 batting points in the Championship and we’d have been right up there, only a win or so away from being first or second. We need to find stability in our top-order and ways to adapt.

“We’ve 11 bowlers in our squad now, four rookies and seven (seniors) with James Taylor coming in, so we’re probably going to look for an overseas batting option, ideally someone who would like to play both formats, Championship and Blast, so when the international schedule comes out in a couple of weeks, we’ll have a good idea of which players are potentially available.”

Hamilton, who says the Pakistan batsman Imam-ul-Haq could be one option following his successful short spell at the county last year, was generally delighted with the white-ball form. The Blast, for him, was “a real highlight”, despite Overton’s extraordinary performance in the quarter-finals. He feels Yorkshire are now “one of the best teams in the country in white-ball” - a notable claim considering they have never won a white-ball trophy, although by no means a controversial one. So long ago was Yorkshire’s last limited-overs trophy, indeed (2002), that the match was played with a red ball.

“The way we’ve won white-ball games, the manner we’ve won them, the way that we’ve won games from positions that we wouldn’t have done last year - the progress, I think, has been outstanding,” he says.

The next step, he admits, is knockout success - turning progress into silverware. Disappointment knocked again when the club lost their One-Day Cup quarter-final to Nottinghamshire at York, having blazed a trail through the group stages - just as they did in 2025, before losing in the semi-finals to Hampshire at Scarborough.

“That’s the next stage,” he says, “and it’s something we’ve been chasing. Previously, we’ve never looked like winning anything in white-ball, but now we’re going in expecting to win. Obviously, we’d love to win something, and I firmly believe we’re not far away. In both red and white-ball cricket, I genuinely think we’re in a really good place.”