Sweet vindication as Gale shelves the demons

For Andrew Gale, payback time came six minutes after three o'clock, when applause broke out among the Yorkshire supporters who had made the journey south. Out in the middle with Yorkshire two wickets down but already only 20 runs behind Middlesex's first-innings score, the Yorkshire captain had just pulled James Harris for his sixth boundary but a glance up towards the visitors' balcony confirmed that what he was hearing was nothing whatsoever to do with the shot he had just played.

The hugs and high fives being exchanged by his team-mates and the Yorkshire coaching staff signalled the start of celebrations with the news from Trent Bridge that Nottinghamshire had been bowled out with only one batting bonus point, leaving Gale's team out of reach of all challengers, County Champions for the second year running.

For Gale, if the job were to be completed anywhere other than Headingley, it would be here, at the home of cricket. Actually, I suspect that's probably not true. For the sheer personal satisfaction of being able to stand, arms aloft, trophy raised above his head, putting all the air in his lungs into a long, loud roar of triumph in front of the Victorian pavilion and the Long Room and the blazers and ties and all the other symbols of the cricket establishment that haughtily stole his moment of glory a year ago, for Gale, Lord's would be first choice, second and third.

He has tried not to say so publicly, but you suspect that when he admitted the other day that he had been thinking about this game for some weeks it was about more than simply working out the earliest moment at which Yorkshire could be champions.

It was about a proud Yorkshireman, a Dewsbury lad, standing on the game's most hallowed grass, telling anyone who cared to know that here was Andrew Gale, Yorkshire captain, title-winning Yorkshire captain not once but twice, back to claim his rightful prize, one hand on the silverware, the other metaphorically behind his back, showing two fingers.

Make no mistake, what happened at Trent Bridge last year, with Gale suspended for dissent amid dubious allegations of racist abuse and told that for him to raise the trophy as captain would be "inappropriate", left a deeply bitter taste.

Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire's director of professional cricket, recalled how deeply Gale was affected at being denied what should have been his sweetest moment. "To see his reaction, when he was told he couldn't even be in the photographs, was terrible," Moxon said. "We felt it was very unjust and we just felt desperately sorry for him.

"So everybody at the club is delighted for Galey in particular. To win it again and have the chance to lift the trophy as well will be fantastic for him and he will enjoy the moment."

Gale himself, while keen now to put that memory to bed, admits that he wondered whether it might be his one and only opportunity to realise the dream.

"I've represented this club since I was 10 years old and come up through the ranks only to be told last year I couldn't lift the trophy," he said. "The thought was in my mind that it might be my one chance and it had been taken away.

"So for us to back it up this year and for me to be given another opportunity is overwhelming. And if you are not going to lift the trophy on your own ground, there is no better place to do it than here."

In truth, Gale has been a driven man since the day he signed his first professional contract as a Yorkshire cricketer, as an 18-year-old left-handed batsman and leg-break bowler who had wanted to become a footballer but played the summer game so impressively, with Gomersal and then Cleckheaton in the Yorkshire leagues, that it was soon clear where he was more likely to enjoy a sustained career.

He made his mark first in the one-day sides but, by 2008, he was a regular member of the Championship team, showing enough leadership potential that when Anthony McGrath resigned as captain in 2009 Yorkshire turned to Gale who, at 26 years and 24 days old and by now an England Lions batsman, was appointed the county's youngest professional captain.

Gale took on the role both with pride and conviction. In his first season in charge Yorkshire were third in the Championship, only seven points behind Nottinghamshire. A dip followed, 2011 bringing relegation for the team and a broken arm for their captain, although his own form had been good.

The following year, with the fruits of Yorkshire's refocusing on home-grown talent beginning to bear fruit, with Gale now a player with the experience and gravitas to command respect and commitment from the dressing room, and with the international experience and enthusiasm of Jason Gillespie added to the mix as first-team coach, promotion was won at the first attempt.

By 2013 Gale's fitness was becoming a background issue. Restricted by a hip injury in 2012, his form since then has ebbed and flowed, although 2013 did bring his career-highest innings of 272 against Nottinghamshire at Scarborough, where the sea air has brought restorative benefits for his batting more than once.

The quality of his captaincy did not waver, however, and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the team has only enhanced the respect in which he is held by both the team and the club. It might also be pointed out that the match in which he left himself out last season - at Lord's against Middlesex, as it happens - was the only one in the Championship that Yorkshire lost.

By last season the possibility of a future in Test cricket had gone, realistically, which meant that he knew that winning the title would almost certainly be the pinnacle of his career. Nowhere is the honour and prestige of winning a County Championship celebrated more than in Yorkshire, where successful captains ascend to a role-call of greats and can look ahead to a lifetime held in reverential esteem.

Yet the moment that matters above all, the one that sits at the very heart of all the memories of every successful Yorkshire captain, is the first touch of the trophy, the symbolic recognition of all-conquering achievement, the confirmation that everything he had striven for had been attained, that the prize is his.

It is why, after his regrettable altercation with Ashwell Prince and what appeared to be a determination within the England & Wales Cricket Board to throw the book at him, the denial of that moment at Trent Bridge last September, when victory over Nottinghamshire clinched Yorkshire's first title for 13 years, was so deeply painful.

It left Gale to contemplate the possibility that he could finish his career, the 12th Yorkshire captain to win the title alongside Lord Hawke, Brian Sellars, Brian Close and the rest, without having experienced the ultimate taste of victory.

He admits now that never a day has passed this summer, whether it has been spent in the nets, on the field or in the gym, where he has worked as hard as any of his younger colleagues to keep ahead of the physical challenges he faces, in which that haunting thought has not crossed his mind.

It has been his own extra motivation, he says, from the first gentle pre-season warm-up to the rallying cry he delivered to his team before they took the field here, to which his bowlers, the old warhorse Ryan Sidebottom in particular, responded with such emphatic, devastating effect: 5 for 18 as Middlesex fell for 106. He didn't do badly himself either, striking 98 as Yorlshire finished 132 ahead with a wicket remaining.

"Galey is Yorkshire through and through, he bleeds Yorkshire and that means a great deal to the lads," Sidebottom said, the first bottle of champagne disappearing fast on the press conference table as he, Gale and coach Jason Gillespie sought to express their feelings.

"What happened last year hurt us too and we wanted to win again not just for ourselves but for him."

Now, with Middlesex seen off and Nottinghamshire's hypothetical chance gone too, Gale will have his due, he will feel the euphoria, he will exorcise his demons, and it will be all the more glorious for the coup de grace having been delivered on this field.