ANDREW Gale is targeting a fast start to the new season to boost Yorkshire's Specsavers County Championship challenge, as well as his own limited-overs ambitions.

The county's four-day captain is confident he can build on last season's 1,006 competition runs, and he has revealed that he is adopting the approach of a former White Rose player with regards to personal targets.

"Every batter will look at 1,000 runs as a benchmark, but I remember Jacques Rudolph saying 'you've got to target 1,500'," explained the Cleckheaton batsman.

"His view was that if you target that, you can end up with 1,250 if things don't go as well. Whereas if you target 1,000, you may only end up with 800."

Gale knows that getting off to a flyer, starting against Hampshire on Sunday, is the best way to make Jason Gillespie and Alex Lees rethink their decision to overlook him for the early stages of the T20 and one-day competitions.

But, if things do not go as planned, the man who is close friends with James Taylor is also refusing to get too worked up about it.

"I feel really good," he said. "I've had a good build-up, and it's probably the best I've ever felt going into a season.

"I'm usually a slow starter, but I've worked hard. I had a decent start last year as well, so maybe I'm getting a bit more experienced and better with age.

"I want to get out of the blocks as everyone does, but I'm pretty relaxed if I don't. I think I let myself down when I try too hard. My record is good, and I know I will come good at some stage."

The left-hander has been hurt by his omission from Yorkshire's immediate plans for white-ball cricket, which starts in the NatWest T20 Blast on May 27.

He is the county's leading T20 run-scorer, although he has only scored two fifties since the end of 2012.

"I've been told that I'm not in contention at the minute. I'm bitterly disappointed, I'm not going to lie because I've worked hard on my white-ball stuff since Christmas," he said.

"I'm not saying I entirely agree with it, but I accept the decision and won't sulk because I want to get back in.

"All I can do is score runs in the red-ball stuff and put pressure on.

"There's also second-team cricket and our T20 warm-up games against the leagues.

"There's still two months before the first T20. That's a lot of cricket.

"A lot of batsmen can fall out of form, and I could be in the form of my life. If I go and blast three hundreds in the first five Championship games, it will be hard for them not to play me."

The second day of Yorkshire's University friendly against Leeds-Bradford MCC Universities at Headingley was washed out yesterday.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire say they only have 300 tickets left for day three of England's Test v Sri Lanka next month, starting on Thursday, May 19, while 70 per cent of the ground is sold out for day two.

"We are confident this will be the biggest selling Test match at the venue since England hosted South Africa in August 2012," said commercial director Andy Dawson.