Yorkshire Vikings v Lancashire Lightning: No T20 Blast panic for head coach Ottis Gibson ahead of Roses showdown

This is a club that has never won the 20-over tournament and only three times reached Finals Day in 21 seasons.

It would be nice to say “oh well, that’s because t’focus is on red-ball cricket, tha knows”.

Yet this is a club that has only won two Championships in that time and is now languishing in Division Two, winless in 30 of its last 34 red-ball games.

Some success, any success, would be welcome at present.

For Ottis Gibson, the head coach seeking to pilot a much stronger second half of the season in the Championship, and to buck the trend of historic underperformance in the 20-over arena, there is no cause for concern over an identical win/loss record in the Blast so far – WLWWLL.

There is certainly plenty of time to put things right – why, the only thing longer than the 14-match group stage is the River Nile.

And where better to start than with a game against Lancashire, the old enemy, at Headingley on Thursday.

With a near sell-out crowd expected, and with seventh-placed Yorkshire looking to knock leaders Lancashire off their perch after five wins from seven, Gibson is confident his men can go on a run.

“There’s no panic – we’ve won three and lost three,” he said. “We’re still somewhere near the top of the table, and we just need to get back to basics and simple little things like one of the top-five taking responsibility for scoring the bulk of the runs.

“We’ve lost a couple of games back-to-back, but last year we went on a run of five or six games winning, so we know what we’re capable of.

“We’ll make sure we create some clarity around where we need to be better as a group and get ready for the game.”

There are always areas that a team can improve.

Yorkshire bowled nine wides and a no-ball in their last fixture against Leicestershire, for instance, resulting not only in 11 extra runs but also 10 extra balls for their opponents to potentially score runs from, an obvious factor in a 20-run defeat.

“There are always things you can do better,” said Gibson.

“The game usually hinges on small margins.

"Could we have bowled fewer wides, for example? Yes, but we lost by 20 and we bowled nine wides, so I don’t think that was the reason.

“I just think they put us under pressure.

"If one of our top-five got a sixty like Rishi Patel, then we probably chase that score (166).

“T20 is never going to be the perfect science where we have the perfect game.

"I actually thought at Northants we were very close to the perfect game, but that’s not going to happen all the time.

“When you win you’re never too high, and when you lose you’re never too low, you just try and sit down and figure out what you can do better.”

In the aftermath of the Leicestershire result, with the Foxes securing a quickfire double over Yorkshire following a seven-wicket win at the Uptonsteel County Ground, Gibson talked about the importance of the top-five batsmen seeing the job through.

It is some top-five on paper – Adam Lyth, Dawid Malan, Joe Root, Shan Masood and Donovan Ferreira – and all have shown their quality at some stage so far, especially so the openers Lyth and Malan.

“For us, the strength of our batting is at the top,” said Gibson.

“One of the things that we talk about all the time, even if we’re chasing, is that we say we want one of our top-five batters batting in the last five overs.

“Generally, if we have one of our top-five experienced batters batting in the last five overs, we get a bigger score or we get home.

“If you’re giving your bowlers five overs to face, then you’re always putting yourself under pressure as a team, but we believe in the guys right through the line-up.”

No extra motivation will be necessary for the visit of the Red Rose, who lost last time out in a high-scoring fixture at Durham.

They fell three short of chasing 219 to end a sequence of four successive wins.

“It’s an exciting one,” said Gibson, “one that everyone’s looking forward to.

"When the fixtures come out, all the guys in the dressing room look to see when the Roses match is going to be.

“Hopefully, we can fill the stands and get some good weather and put on a really good show for a packed house at Headingley.

“It promises to be a great game of cricket.”