ANDREW Gale insists Yorkshire are far from home and hosed in the LV= County Championship title race.

Despite holding a 34-point lead at the top of Division One over second-placed Warwickshire with a game in hand and six to play, four-day captain Gale believes there are three teams still capable of pinching their crown.

Those are Warwickshire, third-placed Durham, who visit Scarborough today, and Middlesex in fourth.

Durham and Middlesex are 37 points behind, having played once more than Yorkshire, although they both face the white rose county in the run-in. Gale and company travel to Lord's to face Middlesex next month.

Gale returns to the Yorkshire team today having recovered from a minor right wrist injury which ruled him out of the last week of Royal London Cup one-day matches.

He said: "There's always a twist and turn in a season. If you look at the Championship now, there's a lot of people saying 'you've already won it'. For me, we're not even close.

"We are 30 points clear, and we are playing some good cricket, but it doesn't feel like it's in our grasp at all. We played so well last year but we only just won it.

"We are playing well again this year but we've just got to make sure we keep doing what we're doing. We know now how to win games and identify key periods in games and we're very good at closing those key periods out.

"When we do get in a position where we are starting to command, we don't just breeze through it. We are so ruthless that we don't give the other team a sniff.

"I still feel like we've got a lot left in the tank in Championship cricket. I don't think we're playing our best cricket.

"I certainly don't think we're playing as well as we did last year but I'm really pleased with how it's gone. Given all the call-ups and missing players, I thought it was going to be a lot tougher. But people have stepped up."

Today's clash is a repeat of the match in 2013 which cost Yorkshire the title.

A win would have given them pole position at the top of Division One with three matches to play – but they were under par with the bat and lost to hand Durham a route back in.

After the match, Yorkshire led the division by 5.5 points with Durham having a game in hand and they went on to be crowned champions.

Gale said: "We learnt a lot from that game. We probably got too focused on the occasion and tried too hard, whereas now we just focus on the process. We tried so hard to win that we ended up being rubbish.

"I guess they've got to do all the running in this game. They're in a similar position to what we were in two years ago."

England have made Ashes squad men Liam Plunkett and Adil Rashid available to play after leaving them out of the fourth-Test team at Trent Bridge yesterday morning.

Yorkshire have also been boosted by the return to fitness of key duo Gary Ballance and Jack Brooks after both missed 50-over matches during the last week with minor hamstring and back injuries.

Both played in the RL50 defeat to Somerset at Scarborough on Wednesday.