Preview: Yorkshire v Gloucestershire, Vitality County Championship

Ottis Gibson remains confident Yorkshire can achieve his main summer target of promotion in the Vitality County Championship, a competition that resumes this weekend.

Yorkshire play their eighth match of 14 against Gloucestershire at Scarborough's North Marine Road from Sunday (11am) and they are still looking for their first red ball win of 2024.

Their Division Two campaign has been on hold since the end of May, with the provinces playing the first half of the Vitality Blast T20.

Now the next fortnight will be rededicated to the Championship before another lengthy break until the end of August for more white-ball cricket.

Yorkshire take on Gloucestershire before heading to Chesterfield to take on Derbyshire next Sunday. Gibson's charges with both provinces are already the same this season.

They were two results that make up what has undoubtedly been a frustrating first half of the summer in Championship cricket; five draws and two defeats. They are in second place at the bottom of the table with 77 points, having failed to convert a large number of winning positions.

The weather has played a role in some of the draws – there's no denying that.

But in games like Gloucestershire at Bristol and Glamorgan at Headingley there was plenty of time to bring home the advantages they had. Unfortunately, neither side was able to finish.

Yet coach Gibson knows Yorkshire are far from out of the race for a top two finish, promotion and a return to Division One for the first time since 2022.

They are just 24 points behind second-placed Middlesex – the maximum points available for a win – and 32 points behind leaders Sussex. Both counties must visit God's Own County before the end of September.

But first and foremost Gloucestershire – a team sitting fourth on 90 points with one win, one defeat and five draws.

We were somewhere at the bottom of the list, but two wins put us somewhere at the top of the list, Gibson said.

It's about finding a way to win those games.

We did a lot of good things in the championship.

We made runs, we knocked teams out. We did that twice in Sussex, but of course we also bowled twice.

That's a game we should have won.

In the championship we have to make sure we improve on the good things we have done.

We were in a position to win at least three or four of those games. At Middlesex we weren't at the races. We could have won any other game, and I hope we learned a lot from those situations.

There are still seven games to play, and we just need one win to really get us moving in that competition.

In Yorkshire's last Championship match, they drew against Northamptonshire at Wantage Road in late May, with the hosts holding on to a draw eight wickets down in their second innings.

Players like Fin Bean, George Hill, Jonny Tattersall and Sri Lankan overseas fast bowler Vishwa Fernando are all set to return after not being featured in the Vitality Blast.

Left-arm quick Fernando is available for the next two championship games. He will then back up with Sri Lanka ahead of their late summer Test series in England.

New ball seamer Ben Coad is not quite fit enough to return from the back injury that has sidelined him since the defeat to Sussex at Hove in mid-May, while Yorkshire need a new captain for this week with Shan Masood unavailable due to a concussion. ago in Thursday's Roses T20. Jonny Tattersall is the most likely candidate to lead the team.

Gloucestershire played Derbyshire at home in their final Championship appearance at the end of May.

Led by middle-order batsman Graeme van Buuren, they will pick two of three available foreign players for this match.

Australian opening batsman Cameron Bancroft is with Glos for the full season, as is Pakistani left-arm spinner Zafar Gohar. But they have also signed Australian all-rounder Beau Webster for a spell in the Vitality Blast, in addition to some mid-season championship games.

With Gohar having made just two appearances in four-day cricket so far this season, it is likely that Yorkshire will face Bancroft and Webster.

Webster's contract for Gloucestershire was initially advertised as only these two Championship games in June, but he also played the two before the start of the Blast.

He was an intermediate order batsman and a Seamer, claiming 6-100 and hitting 76 in the first innings of the Derbyshire tie.

Van Buuren is their leading run-scorer in this season's championship with 584, while his compatriot, the pace bowler Marchant de Lange, is their leading wicket-taker with 21.