Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale has admitted that he will consider his future after the Tykes missed out on an historic third successive County Championship title.

The White Rose county slipped to a 61-run defeat against Middlesex at Lord’s after an agreement was reached that would see Yorkshire chase 240 in 40 overs.

But after Toby Roland-Jones inspired the home side to victory and secured the Championship trophy for his side with a hat-trick, Gale admitted that he would be taking stock of his own situation.

The left-hander has struggled in 2016, and finishes the season having made just 525 runs in 15 matches, including two half-centuries.

“I’ll take stock yet over the next couple of months and see how I feel,” he said. “I’m pretty emotional at the minute after not getting over the line but I’ll see how I feel.

“I haven’t had a fantastic year with the bat. It’s been a poor year. I’ll just have to think about it going forward.

“I feel Middlesex are worthy winners. They’ve played the best cricket throughout the season and most consistently.

“We’ve been up against it at times. As usual we’ve had call-ups but we’ve also had injuries. We had two fit seamers at one point.

“To stay in the hunt playing at 60 or 70 per cent of our potential is a fantastic effort.”

Yorkshire’s day began with a search for wickets, but Nick Gubbins (93) and Dawid Malan took their partnership for the third wicket to 198 before the former chipped a catch back to Azeem Rafiq.

That left the hosts on 200-3 and leading by just 80 with two sessions to play, but with Malan having moved through to his century and wickets proving hard to come by, the two sides negotiated a contrived finish.

What followed a farcical period of play as Adam Lyth and Alex Lees offered up nine overs of declaration bowling, and though Lees picked up the wickets of Malan (116) and John Simpson (31), Middlesex eventually reached their agreed score.

Yorkshire’s chase began in poor fashion as Lyth, Lees and David Willey – who was promoted to bat number three – all perishing before Gary Ballance and Tim Bresnan added 50 for the fourth wicket.

Their partnership was broken when Ballance (30) miscued an aerial drive off Steven Finn, and though Bresnan (55) went through to a half-century to back up his first-innings hundred, when he fell lbw to Roland-Jones most of Yorkshire’s hopes went with him.

Gale looked to add the impetus to the innings, but he was bowled by Roland-Jones for 22 before the England Lions seamer rounded off the day with a hat-trick by dismissing Rafiq, Andrew Hodd and Ryan Sidebottom.

The defeat marks the end of Jason Gillespie’s time as first-team coach at Headingley, and Gale reserved some special words for the man who took the club from Division Two to back-to-back county champions during his time with the county.

“It’s really sad to see Dizzy go. In five years we’ve been promoted back to Division One, we’ve had two T20 Finals Day, a couple of semi-finals in the one-day competition and two Championship trophies.

“It is disappointing not to send him off with a trophy but he can proud of what he has achieved with this group of players,” said Gale.