Yorkshire Vikings suffer Finals Day heartache but coach Ottis Gibson sees bright T20 Blast future

Ottis Gibson insisted that there was a lot to look forward to from his young Yorkshire team despite their T20 Finals Day exit at Edgbaston.

Yorkshire went home early after losing their semi-final to Lancashire by six wickets.

The Red Rose reached a target of 205 with eight balls left after half-centuries from Tom Kohler-Cadmore and Jordan Thompson - the latter from just 17 deliveries - took Yorkshire to a total of 204-7.

But Yorkshire’s inexperience showed as they conceded 89 runs in the six-over powerplay as Lancashire broke the back of the chase, with only overseas signings Shadab Khan and Dominic Drakes, plus England’s Dom Bess, conceding less than 10 runs an over.

It means that Yorkshire are one of five counties still to have won the T20 along with Derbyshire, Durham, Glamorgan and Gloucestershire in the 20-season history of the competition.

But head coach Gibson, having overseen Yorkshire’s first Finals Day appearance since 2016, was proud of his men and insisted that the future is bright.

“As disappointed as I am, and as disappointed as all the lads are, there’s also a lot of excitement,” said Gibson.

“There’s a lot to look forward to. We’ve got a young squad of players and they will grow a lot from the experiences that they’ve had this year.

“There’s a lot of things that we can take out of it (the tournament), and I’m proud of them.

“We set out to get to Finals Day, and we did that. There’s 18 counties, and yet we were one of the four counties who got to this stage.

“We showed that we are good enough to get here, and that’s important. We had to chop-and-change the side a lot, which hasn’t been easy, and the boys have given it absolutely everything.”

Yorkshire looked strong favourites at the game’s halfway stage, with the players heeding Gibson’s call to attack the occasion with confidence and purpose.

But they were off with the ball and their fielding became ragged, the two factors often inextricably linked.

“First of all, I thought to get over 200 was a great effort,” said Gibson. “The par score at Edgbaston is 170, I think, so to get 200 you feel like you’ve got a good chance.

“Jordan played exceptionally well and Tom, too. There were some good contributions on the batting front. Unfortunately, we reserved our worst bowling performance of the season for the semi-final, and at the end of the day that’s where we lost it.

“You give yourself no chance with the ball really when you concede so many runs in the powerplay (89), but it wasn’t through a lack of planning or effort.

“We just didn’t execute the plans we spoke about and we got punished for that. Then the fielding can start to go a bit, and so on.

“Of course we wanted to win and to play better than we did - we practised nicely going into the game and had a really good meeting to discuss our plans - but the game is played out in the middle and you can have the best plans in the world but if you don’t execute them, you’re not going to win, and we weren’t at the races in terms of our bowling and fielding.”

Yorkshire will have two big holes to fill next year in the absence of Kohler-Cadmore and David Willey, who are leaving for Somerset and Northamptonshire respectively at the end of the season.

Willey, the club’s T20 captain, was a big miss on Finals Day - one of five players not released by England for the semi along with Yorkshire’s Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow and Lancashire’s Jos Buttler and Liam Livingstone, with Harry Brook captaining Yorkshire instead.

“We’ll have to look at recruitment, who we can get in,” added Gibson. “A little bit more experience on the bowling front, perhaps, because some of our young players are learning on the job.

“We’re going to miss Tom and we’re going to miss Dave. We also thank them as they move on to the next stage of their careers.”