Yorkshire CCC hoping to catch on as they attempt to get season up and running at Gloucestershire

Yorkshire have dropped too many catches and lost too many matches since Ottis Gibson became their head coach, and as his side goes in search of a morale-boosting win against Gloucestershire in Bristol, he accepts that must change if Yorkshire are to achieve their goal of winning promotion.

Another key catch was spilled in the opening match against Leicestershire at Headingley, when James Wharton grassed Rishi Patel at point off the bowling of Ben Coad.

Patel had eight at the time and went on to make 125, his maiden first-class century, as Leicestershire knocked off 389 to win by three wickets, the fifth-highest target that Yorkshire have conceded in their first-class history.

While it would be unfair to single out Wharton, who impressed with the bat with a maiden half-century, the problem is a collective one which Gibson said they are trying to put right.

“Our fielding and our catching will need to improve if we’re going to win games,” he admitted.

“Remember the amount of games that we sort of lost or drew last year because we dropped quite a lot of catches.

“We’ve done a hell of a lot of work on our fielding this year, but so far it doesn’t seem that it has worked as well as it should have done.”

One thing that did work against Leicestershire was the batting, Yorkshire scoring 803 runs in the match.

So much so, it has left them with a headache this week as they seek to accommodate new signing Saud Shakeel, the Pakistan batsman recruited on an initial four-match basis with the scope to extend his stay.

“He’s a fantastic player, and what he brings immediately is a selection dilemma because somebody needs to miss out in order for Saud to play,” said Gibson.

“He’ll bring a lot of solidity in our batting line-up - we had it in the Leicestershire game, but he will bring us that international experience and hopefully lots and lots of runs over the next couple of weeks.”

However, Gibson cautioned: “He’s not played county cricket before.

"He said he’s played league cricket in and around the Manchester area, I think, but we have to give him some time.

“He’ll need some time to get up to speed.

“The one thing we’ve been very good at recently is integrating new players into our dressing room and the guys have made him feel very welcome already.”

The Leicestershire result was a tough one for Gibson and his players to take, but he said: “You never want to say you’ve done well enough not to lose, because the fact is we did lose, but we did a lot of good things in the game.

“We got over 500 in the first innings and we declared on nearly 300 in the second innings, and we also got 17 wickets.

“We’ll learn from that game and take what we need from it, the things that we need to take with us in terms of who did well and stuff like that, as well as the things we need to get better at.

“We’ll try and get the season up-and-running in Bristol.”