Ottis Gibson EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: 'Gary Ballance is a real asset'.

Ottis Gibson appears certain of one thing as he plots a County Championship title challenge by Yorkshire this summer: Gary Ballance should play a part in it. 

While casting an eye over a practice match at a sun-drenched Bradford Park Avenue, Yorkshire’s new head coach switches talk of the crisis club’s grubby past beyond the threat of a points deduction to brighter visions of the future. 

The 32-year-old Ballance is on a break after admitting using racist language towards former team-mate Azeem Rafiq and could yet be charged as part of a Cricket Discipline Commission investigation. 

Gibson, having held a meeting with Ballance at Headingley on Wednesday that lasted more than hour, wants him back in the fold. 

‘He is struggling at the minute mentally with everything that’s going on and the fact that the ECB are still doing an investigation. We don’t know what the findings of that might be, and he doesn’t feel ready to come back but he assures me he is still very keen to continue his career at Yorkshire,’ Gibson says. 

‘Gary Ballance in any team in the County Championship makes that team better. We will support him as best as we can and hope that he gets through what he’s going through and comes back as soon as he can. He is an asset. 

‘I’ve worked with Gary in the England set-up. He’s a lovely, bubbly guy, a very happy guy generally and I was surprised when I heard about some of the things because that’s not the guy that I knew in the England dressing room. I told him that.’ 

Is there a fear he might lose the experienced left-handed batter to a call made over his head? ‘If the ECB ban him then we would have to deal with that, but if they don’t, I would like to think that the club would allow him to continue because he’s