Yorkshire v Durham - Andrew Gale targets maximum return

“We’ve got three games left and we’ve got to win three out of three,” said the first-team coach.

“It’s as simple as that.”

Asked whether that is a realistic ambition based on Yorkshire’s current T20 form and their T20 form over many years now, Gale admitted: “Based on our current form, probably not, and over the last few years, it seems to have been win one, lose one, win one, lose one.

“This game (T20) frustrates the hell out of me.

“But given the players that we’ve got – and we might have a few more England players back at the end of the week – I’m still confident as coach that we can get on a run.

“I feel that we’ve played some really good T20 at times this year.”

Yorkshire go into tonight’s match against Durham at Emerald Headingley needing not only to win their final three games (they play Lancashire at Old Trafford tomorrow and Derbyshire at Headingley on Sunday), but also needing other results to go their way.

They are effectively battling to finish third in the North Group and to qualify as one of the two-best third-placed sides from the three groups, with the comparative points calculations not presently in their favour.

It will be a tall order, one made more difficult in their last match against Lancashire at Headingley on Monday by the absence of four players who had to be stood down as one of them was awaiting the outcome of a Covid test.

One of the players’ family members had shown possible symptoms, so David Willey, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Matt Fisher and Josh Poysden – who had all been in contact outside Yorkshire’s normal cricketing “bubble” – missed the game, with Yorkshire last night still awaiting the outcome of that Covid test.

“Hopefully, we’ll have those lads back for the Durham game, but we’ll have to wait and see,” added Gale, who revealed that the players concerned were waiting outside the Headingley ground until an hour before the start of play on Monday in the hope that a negative result would be confirmed by text message.

“To have the heart of your team ripped out like that was always going to be tough given the circumstances.

“I basically had to sit the rest of the lads down at 4 o’clock (prior to the Lancashire match) and put two different teams in place… ‘This is the team if this text (Covid result) comes, this is the team if the text doesn’t come.’ It wasn’t ideal.

“We were always going to give those four lads the best chance of playing the game, though, because they’re such big players for us.

“It was disruptive, I’m not going to lie, and it can cause a little bit of chaos.

“But I guess that’s the world we’re living in at this moment in time.

“Other counties have probably had similar situations.”

Despite it all, Gale has not given up hope of Yorkshire reaching the last eight.

“We’ve played some good cricket up to that game,” he remarked, with a young and inexperienced Yorkshire side losing by six wickets against the old enemy.

“Look at our batting, for example. We’ve made 190 and over a number of times.

“We’re lacking a bit of experience with the ball; we know that. We’ve got to be a bit more savvy in certain respects.

“We know that we’ve got to perform our skills and plans better in pressure situations, and I feel like we’ve sort of played to about 90 per cent of our ability.

“We’ve lost a couple of close games, and we’ve spoken about that for a number of years.

“We’ve got to start winning those tight matches.”