Yorkshire CCC: 'It was always going to need five years us great again' - Ottis Gibson

Yorkshire have gone eight years without silverware after they won back-to-back County Championships in the mid-2010s.

Gibson was appointed head coach at the start of last year and revealed that he saw it as a five-year mission.

“When I spoke to ‘Goughy’ (Darren Gough, the managing director of cricket) about coming to coach Yorkshire, and looking at where the club was and all the stuff that was going on, the squad, the people likely to be missing, and so on, the conversation between ‘Goughy’ and myself was that I think this is a five-year project,” said Gibson.

“It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen in one year. It’s not going to happen in two years. It’s a five-year project.

“When you look at the squad on paper, and you have Rashid, Brook, Bairstow, Root, Malan, and all that, on paper it looks fantastic. It looks like you have a fantastic squad. But we know in reality that we’re not going to see much of those guys; we’re hardly going to see Harry Brook again.

“Therefore, we need to look at the type of squad that we want to build, and Dan Moriarty, for example, (the left-arm spinner signed from Surrey), fits with the type of cricketer that I like. We don’t have a left-arm spinner, so the opportunity to sign a quality left-arm spinner, to add to what we already have, is a no-brainer. I think he will add really good value and make us competitive.

“We’re in a rebuild, and in an ideal world we learn quickly and become the team that we want to be in a year.

“Or, we take a little bit longer, like we are at the moment, with a lot of youngsters trying to find their way in the game.

“Eventually, this group of young players, mostly home-grown players, will hopefully be ready to really take off and fly and be winning games a lot more comfortably across all comps, being a lot more consistent.

“When you look at some of the best teams, Australia when they went on their run, even the West Indies of the 70s and 80s when they went on their run, they had a lot of people playing together for a long time.

“It does take time, but I strongly believe that in the next three-to-four years this team, in all formats of the game, will be a strong-performing team capable of winning trophies.”

Gibson, the former West Indies fast bowler, was frustrated in his efforts to lead the club back into Division One of the County Championship at the first attempt.

Yorkshire were relegated last season after a nightmare period of off-field problems from which resulting points sanctions have now ended their promotion ambitions.

“The thing that we set out to do at the start of this year was to try and get out of the Second Division at the first attempt,” said Gibson.

“Of course, that’s not going to happen now because of the points deductions but also, perhaps, because of the way that we’ve played as well.

“We’re not playing very well at the moment and we’ve got to be honest about that, but we still have some very good players.

“Our four-day cricket this year has been decent. It’s difficult, because we’ve not won games of cricket but there’s games of cricket that we would have won had the rain not intervened.

"Twice against Sussex we would have won. Perhaps at Worcester we would have won as well.

“Ultimately, the measure of how well you do as a county in this country is can you win the County Championship? And that’s what we’ve spoken about.

“Of course, relegation was not on our radar last year but it happened, and now we’ve got to battle our way back into the First Division and then give ourselves the best opportunity of winning the County Championship.”

Gibson feels that Yorkshire are a better red-ball than white-ball team, a view supported by statistics. While their Championship cricket has generally been competitive for a long time, Yorkshire have gone 21 years without a white-ball trophy. This year, they finished sixth out of nine in Group A of the One-Day Cup, and eighth out of nine in the T20 North Group.

“Our four-day cricket is stronger than our white-ball cricket at the moment,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of guys here who haven’t figured out their white-ball game yet, but we’ll get there.

“We’ve got fantastic players in the dressing room, just a little bit stuck in how to approach it at the moment, but we’ll figure it out.”

Gibson said his enthusiasm for the role remains undimmed despite the challenges on-and-off the pitch. He is also thankful for the flexibility to coach at the ILT20 in Dubai in the winter and believes it important for coaches and players to broaden their experience.

“I’m very grateful that I get the opportunity to do the one franchise tournament in January when there’s not much going on, but other than that I’m here,” he said.

"I’m Yorkshire’s head coach and, as difficult as the job is at the moment, I enjoy my job.

"I will most likely be doing the ILT20 again next year, and a lot of our younger lads will also go and get experience around the world.

"Ultimately, we all want to improve and do the best for Yorkshire.”