Ballance takes on Yorkshire's Pandora's Box

In one patch of the Headingley outfield, Joe Root was reiterating to a steady stream of interviewees that the England captaincy would bring out the best in his batting. A few yards away, as the new captain of Yorkshire, Gary Ballance was saying pretty much the same thing.

Two captains, two different career shifts. Root, at 26, is England's golden child and will barely be seen by Yorkshire all summer; Ballance, a year older, feels a long way from an England recall and played the last of his 21 Tests against Bangladesh in Dhaka last October. But both know that the only currency that really matters is runs.

That may be a surprise to some, considering the currency joke flying around social media that the new pound coin has been designed with 12 sides to help spanner it out of a Yorkshireman's hands.

Root certainly thinks that Ballance, whom he has played cricket alongside for much of the past decade, has what it takes. It even led him fondly to imagine playing for Yorkshire which won't happen often these days but at least cheered everyone up with the thought.

"I'm looking forward to working under Gaz because he's a natural leader," he said. "I've heard people saying he's quite softly spoken but he leads by example and when he does speak he holds a room and everybody listens to what he has to say. I think he'll do a fantastic job."

A decade since he left Derbyshire to sign academy terms with Yorkshire, Ballance says he "counts himself as a Yorkshire lad". He has trekked through the Dales and says he "likes a Yorkshire pudding". Further investigation revealed that he meant eating one, rather than cooking one, so he has a little way to go yet.

The Zimbabwean accent still largely remains, although he claims he can "put on a bit more of a Yorkshire accent" in the dressing room now and then. Probably when he needs to be emphatic. "I've served my time," he said.

Few would disagree. Ballance, highly regarded, was the obvious choice as Yorkshire captain, especially once Andrew Gale, who has stepped up from the captaincy to become the county's new head coach, decided he preferred someone to skipper in all three formats.

Gale is first to recognise that Ballance will bring a change of style. "Gary is passionate, but a lot more of an introvert than me," he said. "I think I was probably a bit more aggressive and in your face, quite vocal, around the dressing room. He has already got the respect of the lads. When he does speak, people listen. He has a lot of experience and he knows the game inside out."

Both captain and coach presented Middlesex, who pipped Yorkshire and Somerset to the title on the last day of the season in 2016, as an obvious danger to their ambitions of winning a third title in four years.

It was educational to suggest that Surrey would also be in the mix. Both Gale and Ballance held their own counsel on that one, thereby staying true to the tradition forged when these two counties dominated English cricket that neither would volunteer praise of the other except in the most unavoidable circumstances.

Gale, as a recently retired captain with an up-and-at-'em character, could easily stumble into the trap of still wanting to run the show, but he sounded too wise to make that mistake. He valued the independence allowed by Jason Gillespie, his predecessor as head coach, and the director of cricket Martyn Moxon and wants to give Ballance the same room to run things his way.

"The best thing for me was that Jason and Martyn let me have a free run, let me pick the team that I wanted, didn't intervene much and if Gary is going to be successful I have to allow Gary to do that. Ultimately, he has to be happy with the team he takes out on the field."

The only question surrounding Ballance's appointment was whether England calls would become so common that they would prove disruptive. But he has slipped down the pecking order and, if he gets so many runs as captain that England regain interest, then Yorkshire will have benefited in the meantime. If that happens, it is unlikely to happen this side of the Ashes.

"I don't think the England situation will affect me one bit," he said. "I will still want to be scoring runs. I still want to play for England but if you focus upon playing for England too much you forget about the task in hand. Hopefully the added responsibility will bring the best out of my batting. I just want to focus on winning games for Yorkshire and if I ever get the call again great."

When Yorkshire won the first of back-to-back Championships in 2014, he was raucously cheered by the supporters who had made the trip to Trent Bridge to see them lift the trophy, a fact not unconnected by his happily topless appearance in the tabloids who captured a night out in a Nottingham nightclub, Pandora's Box, at the end of a drawn Test against India at Trent Bridge.

The Yorkshire captaincy has been a Pandora's Box for many, becoming more complicated with every decision, but he is equipped for the challenge: he is a more serious thinker about the game than that nightclub malarkey suggested and, asked if it gave a faulty impression of him, remarked that: "If you thought about cricket all the time you would go mad".

This then is a man whose leadership qualities Yorkshire supporters will happily put their shirt on. Just watch out for the counties on both sides of the Thames. Even the one they don't like to mention.