A year to the day after Yorkshire first won the Championship under his watch, Andrew Gale finally got to lift the trophy. That day in Nottingham, Gale had watched on with tears in his eyes, but yesterday it was his coach, Jason Gillespie, welling up; this triumph has been driven by a genuine feeling of injustice about Gale’s treatment by the England and Wales Cricket Board during the Ashwell Prince saga of 2014.
“I was probably lucky I had my sunglasses on because I was emotional because of the debacle last year,” said Gillespie shortly after Gale eventually got his hands on the trophy. “Reasons only known to the people in charge to not only suspend him but deny him the trophy. To do it now, at Lord’s, in front of the Pavilion, is a very special moment.”
Echoing the words of his charges, Gillespie admitted that Gale lifting the trophy had been a motivating factor: “At that moment, my blood was boiling and it has been a driving force.”
Gale himself looked utterly carefree, even if his side had improbably lost a magnificent cricket match, of which the scorecard tells little. To fail to win after starting the game with a triple wicket maiden and bowling Middlesex out for 106 was an almighty let off, although Yorkshire did look at times like they had let off an almighty amount of steam after that first day.
“Since the news came through that we won it, we’ve played some pretty average cricket,” said Gale. “It’s disappointing but fair play to Middlesex, they outplayed us.”
Toby Roland-Jones followed up his maiden century with five for 27 on the final day, all caught by the keeper or slips, using a hint of reverse-swing at which Yorkshire nibbled compulsively, losing their final eight wickets for 42. It was James Harris who made the initial breakthrough, dismissing Adam Lyth and Gary Ballance – for a pair – both nicking balls angled across them, and Tim Murtagh who finished the job, uprooting Steve Patterson’s middle stump.
Despite the defeat, the sense of a weight lifted from Gale’s shoulders was palpable: “It was a very tough pill to swallow at the end of last season and you do wonder if it’s coming round again, but given opportunity to step up, at the home of cricket as well, where we’ve been well supported with the families down.
“Mine weren’t meant to come down until the third day but I thought it could be over in two so I forked out a lot of money to get them down. We’ve been outplayed so I need to learn from that, jumping the bullet like that!”
