Yorkshire’s late show of pride earns captain Gale’s acclaim

The Yorkshire captain said he remained committed to the task of leading the side as they attempt to hit back in 2012.

Yorkshire will be relegated from the County Championship First Division if Worcestershire manage just one point from their final game against Durham at Chester-le-Street starting today, while Yorkshire made no impression either in the one-day tournaments.

But despite a season to forget for Gale and his team, the Yorkshire leader stressed he had no intention of shirking the challenge.

“I still feel as captain I can take this club forward and I remain very committed to the cause,” said Gale.

“Things haven’t gone as well as we would have liked this year and myself and Martyn Moxon (Yorkshire’s director of professional cricket) have to take some responsibility, there’s no doubt about it.

“But the bottom line is, we haven’t played well enough on the pitch consistently and that is what it ultimately boils down to.

“I can’t take full responsibility for the lads’ inconsistencies, but I do play a part in that, obviously, and we all need to learn the lessons of this season.”

Yorkshire’s plight has been exacerbated by the better-than-expected results achieved last year under Gale and Moxon.

The pair led Yorkshire to a third-place finish in the Championship and to within a whisker of the title itself, as well as to the semi-finals of the CB40.

Expectations were naturally high that another good season was in the offing, but, hampered by the absence of an overseas star for much of the year and the loss of form of several key players, Yorkshire were unable to replicate their efforts.

However, Gale is adamant the nucleus of the side remains strong.

“The supporters will obviously be disappointed with how we’ve played this year and we’ve got to hold our hands up and say we haven’t shown enough consistency throughout the season,” he added.

“But if we take a step back and reflect on where we were at the start of when I took over as captain (in December 2009), I still think we’ve made progress overall.

“We haven’t had a good season this time, there’s no getting away from that, but we’ve come a long way with our home-grown players, and, if we can get some experience around them going forward, I think we will have some exciting times.

“There are definitely grounds for optimism.”

Although Yorkshire have struggled collectively, Gale was one of those players who could hold his head high on an individual basis.

The 27-year-old was on course for his most productive season after scoring 769 runs in 12 Championship games before a broken arm kept him out of the last four fixtures.

“I felt I had my most consistent campaign with the bat and it would have been nice to get 1,000 runs for the first time,” he said.

“Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t to be.

“To be honest, the last three or four weeks were easily the most frustrating of my career.

“I’ve never had an injury before and to miss the last part of a season like the one we’ve had was really tough.”

Yorkshire at least finished strongly, playing some good cricket against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in their penultimate match before beating Somerset by six wickets at Headingley Carnegie on Saturday.

Gale was delighted with that spirited finale.

“Two weeks ago, I said to the boys it was important that we showed fight and character no matter what happened,” he added.

“To their credit, the boys went out and did just that.

“At Warwickshire, they played some really good cricket against the title contenders, and then they did it again against Somerset.

“The disappointing thing is that it’s taken until the last couple of weeks of the season to do it because, if we’d played like that throughout the year, we’d probably have been in the top three rather than the bottom two.”

Gale’s sentiments were echoed by Moxon, who admitted it had been a summer of ifs, buts and maybes.

“It was obviously great to finish with a victory and important that we did that for the supporters, but the frustrating thing is it’s only in the last couple of games that we’ve really shown what we’re truly capable of,” he said.

“I know we can be better and the fact is, we simply haven’t taken enough of our opportunities to win games.

“That’s the biggest lesson we’ve got to learn, really – making sure we capitalise when we get ourselves on top.

“If we can learn the lessons of this season then it’s a season worth having, because we know this team hasn’t reached its peak yet by any means.”

Yorkshire held their annual end-of-season player awards at Headingley on Saturday.

Jonny Bairstow was crowned player of the year during a season in which he was the only Yorkshire batsman to top 1,000 Championship runs.

The 21-year-old batsman/wicketkeeper, who scored 1,015 runs at 46.13, was also named young player of the year.

Gary Ballance, also 21, was voted players’ player of the year after a campaign in which he scored 862 Championship runs at 47.88.

Adam Lyth was named fielder of the year, while Alex Lees took the academy player of the year accolade.