Video - Champions: Gale quick to ensure Yorkshire maintain standards

The message from the captain was this … “There’s a history of teams that get relegated one year after winning the County Championship. What do we need to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen to us?”

Yorkshire in 2002. Nottinghamshire in 2006. Lancashire in 2012.

All had gone down one year after winning domestic cricket’s greatest prize.

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In 2011, Gale’s own team had been relegated one year after so nearly winning the title on the final day of the previous campaign.

It convinced him of the need to address the subject.

“The first thing I did when we came back in for training was to get five or six senior players together and say, ‘Right, what do we need to do to carry on being successful?’” said Gale.

“There’s a history of teams winning trophies and getting relegated the year after, or fighting relegation, and I didn’t want that to happen to us.

“The conclusion that we all came to was to make a conscious effort to be very particular about our standards, and to make sure that our standards didn’t slip.

“We said that if we saw any slacking off or people taking their foot off the gas – even little things like timekeeping, not wearing the right stuff, things like that – that we nipped it in the bud and nailed it straight away.”

Gale said one of the biggest influences on discussions was Ryan Sidebottom.

The pace bowler had played in the Notts side that suffered relegation in 2006.

“Siddy was a big driver,” said Gale. “He played in a side that was relegated by mid-August, one year after winning the title, even though they had some stars in their line-up.