The Bears/Pears/County Cricket Thread 2015

[Chris Jameson]

Gloucester are going to win this with a few overs to spare.

[Chris Jameson]

Paul Allott and Colville keep banging on about the mystifying decision not to play Brooks or Sidebottom and play the youngsters instead, if they weren't so lazy and useless they'd soon find that Yorkshire use both this and the hit and run to give the youngsters first team experience.

If they played Sidebottom they'd only moan about how difficult it is for youngsters to break into the first team.

[cheltenhamlion]

I am not moaning. Stitch that Yorkshire, we are back in a final for the first time in ages.

[Chris Jameson]

I'm not moaning I'm just pointing out what a pair of pricks Allott and Colville are, I'm staggered Colville is still employed.

[cheltenhamlion]

Colville is an arse. I am not well placed for a cricket chat this evening though.  I am celebratory drunk.

[Chris Jameson]

Enjoy the final!

[cheltenhamlion]

The winner of Surrey and Notts will be hot favourites but you never know. If Klinger goes well we have a chance.

[Chris Jameson]

Where would Surrey be this season without Kevin Pietersen's contribution?

[Villan For Life]

Where would Surrey be this season without Kevin Pietersen's contribution?

I don't know but Sangakkara's innings for them today in the other semi was wonderful to watch. 166 off 138 balls.

[Chris Jameson]

Decent first over from Sidebottom this morning at Lords, triple wicket maiden.

Middlesex 55/5

[Chris Jameson]

With Middlesex 92/7 and Notts 73/6 at lunch looking like Yorkshire will clinch the title this afternoon. Evidently plans have been made to present the trophy at Lords which will be rather nice for Andrew Gale after the pathetic decision last season not to allow him to be presented with the trophy.

[AVH87]

With Middlesex 92/7 and Notts 73/6 at lunch looking like Yorkshire will clinch the title this afternoon. Evidently plans have been made to present the trophy at Lords which will be rather nice for Andrew Gale after the pathetic decision last season not to allow him to be presented with the trophy.

I don't have that much sympathy towards Gale for what happened last season, he shouldn't have called Ashwell Prince what he did, bang out of order.

[Chris Jameson]

With Middlesex 92/7 and Notts 73/6 at lunch looking like Yorkshire will clinch the title this afternoon. Evidently plans have been made to present the trophy at Lords which will be rather nice for Andrew Gale after the pathetic decision last season not to allow him to be presented with the trophy.

I don't have that much sympathy towards Gale for what happened last season, he shouldn't have called Ashwell Prince what he did, bang out of order.

About him being a Kolpac player? Prince himself said there was no race element to it and spoke in defence of Gale. It was pathetic preventing him from being presented with the trophy. Anyway, bollocks to them he'll get to lift it soon enough.

[Chris Jameson]

That will do.

[Chris Jameson]

From espn.com

For Andrew Gale, payback time came six minutes after three o'clock, when applause broke out among the Yorkshire supporters who had made the journey south. Out in the middle with Yorkshire two wickets down but already only 20 runs behind Middlesex's first-innings score, the Yorkshire captain had just pulled James Harris for his sixth boundary but a glance up towards the visitors' balcony confirmed that what he was hearing was nothing whatsoever to do with the shot he had just played.

The hugs and high fives being exchanged by his team-mates and the Yorkshire coaching staff signalled the start of celebrations with the news from Trent Bridge that Nottinghamshire had been bowled out with only one batting bonus point, leaving Gale's team out of reach of all challengers, County Champions for the second year running.

For Gale, if the job were to be completed anywhere other than Headingley, it would be here, at the home of cricket. Actually, I suspect that's probably not true. For the sheer personal satisfaction of being able to stand, arms aloft, trophy raised above his head, putting all the air in his lungs into a long, loud roar of triumph in front of the Victorian pavilion and the Long Room and the blazers and ties and all the other symbols of the cricket establishment that haughtily stole his moment of glory a year ago, for Gale, Lord's would be first choice, second and third.

He has tried not to say so publicly, but you suspect that when he admitted the other day that he had been thinking about this game for some weeks it was about more than simply working out the earliest moment at which Yorkshire could be champions.

It was about a proud Yorkshireman, a Dewsbury lad, standing on the game's most hallowed grass, telling anyone who cared to know that here was Andrew Gale, Yorkshire captain, title-winning Yorkshire captain not once but twice, back to claim his rightful prize, one hand on the silverware, the other metaphorically behind his back, showing two fingers.

Make no mistake, what happened at Trent Bridge last year, with Gale suspended for dissent amid dubious allegations of racist abuse and told that for him to raise the trophy as captain would be "inappropriate", left a deeply bitter taste. A couple of weeks after the incident, he had still been trying to keep his counsel, trying to pretend he was putting it behind him, trying to move on, but the wound he had suffered was never likely to heal as swiftly as that.

It goes back to the day he signed his first professional contract as a Yorkshire cricketer, as an 18-year-old left-handed batsman and leg-break bowler who had wanted to become a footballer but played the summer game so impressively, with Gomersal and then Cleckheaton in the Yorkshire leagues, that it was soon clear where he was more likely to enjoy a sustained career.

He made his mark first in the one-day sides but, by 2008, he was a regular member of the Championship team, showing enough leadership potential that when Anthony McGrath resigned as captain in 2009 Yorkshire turned to Gale who, at 26 years and 24 days old and by now an England Lions batsman, was appointed the county's youngest professional captain.

Gale took on the role both with pride and conviction. In his first season in charge Yorkshire were third in the Championship, only seven points behind Nottinghamshire. A dip followed, 2011 bringing relegation for the team and a broken arm for their captain, although his own form had been good.

The following year, with the fruits of Yorkshire's refocusing on home-grown talent beginning to bear fruit, with Gale now a player with the experience and gravitas to command respect and commitment from the dressing room, and with the international experience and enthusiasm of Jason Gillespie added to the mix as first-team coach, promotion was won at the first attempt.

By 2013 Gale's fitness was becoming a background issue. Restricted by a hip injury in 2012, his form since then has ebbed and flowed, although 2013 did bring his career-highest innings of 272 against Nottinghamshire at Scarborough, where the sea air has brought restorative benefits for his batting more than once.

The quality of his captaincy did not waver, however, and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the team has only enhanced the respect in which he is held by both the team and the club. It might also be pointed out that the match in which he left himself out last season - at Lord's against Middlesex, as it happens - was the only one in the Championship that Yorkshire lost.

By last season the possibility of a future in Test cricket had gone, realistically, which meant that he knew that winning the title would almost certainly be the pinnacle of his career. Nowhere is the honour and prestige of winning a County Championship celebrated more than in Yorkshire, where successful captains ascend to a role-call of greats and can look ahead to a lifetime held in reverential esteem.

Yet the moment that matters above all, the one that sits at the very heart of all the memories of every successful Yorkshire captain, is the first touch of the trophy, the symbolic recognition of all-conquering achievement, the confirmation that everything he had striven for had been attained, that the prize is his.

It is why, after his regrettable altercation with Ashwell Prince and what appeared to be a determination within the England & Wales Cricket Board to throw the book at him, the denial of that moment at Trent Bridge last September, when victory over Nottinghamshire clinched Yorkshire's first title for 13 years, was so deeply painful.

It left Gale to contemplate the possibility that he could finish his career, the 12th Yorkshire captain to win the title alongside Lord Hawke, Brian Sellars, Brian Close and the rest, without having experienced the ultimate taste of victory.

He admits now that never a day has passed this summer, whether it has been spent in the nets, on the field or in the gym, where he has worked as hard as any of his younger colleagues to keep ahead of the physical challenges he faces, in which that haunting thought has not crossed his mind.

It has been his own extra motivation, he says, from the first gentle pre-season warm-up to the rallying cry he delivered to his team before they took the field here, to which his bowlers, the old warhorse Ryan Sidebottom in particular, responded with such emphatic, devastating effect.

Now, with Middlesex seen off and Nottinghamshire's hypothetical chance gone too, Gale will have his due, he will feel the euphoria, he will exorcise his demons, and it will be all the more glorious for the coup de grace having been delivered on this field.