Yorkshire CCC reporter David Warner assesses the county's prospects for the new season which starts tomorrow.

WINTER is always a turbulent time for Yorkshire and the past one has been stormier than ever but the arrival of spring has seen things settle down.

The first big test of this stability comes tomorrow when Yorkshire open their Championship programme by visiting Surrey at The Oval and if new captain Darren Gough can engineer a win against these fierce old rivals then he will have got his team off to the ideal start.

Gough believes that Yorkshire have now acquired the perfect blend of youth and experience to make them a force in all competitions.

On paper, Yorkshire appear to have a terrific line-up with a wealth of batsmen and fast bowlers who have already stamped their mark on cricket at international level.

And in Adil Rashid and Mark Lawson they have got what is generally acknowledged to be the best pair of young leg-spinners in the country, both of whom have England potential.

But last year's squad also looked far more threatening on paper. Much will depend upon whether Gough has been able to heal the wounds that are said to have been caused in by a lack of communications between the players and director of cricket David Byas, who has now left the club.

The jury is still out on this issue and will not delivery its verdict until well into the season when it should be more apparent whether Byas's way of working was to blame or if the players were simply making excuses for shortcomings of their own making.

What Yorkshire must strive for in the Championship is a greater collective first innings effort from their batsmen who last season only managed 400-plus and maximum batting bonus points on two occasions.

Not only did this failing cost the team valuable points but it also made life far simpler for their opponents who were able to take charge much easier than if Yorkshire had made larger first innings scores.

On the face of it, a top-five batting line-up of, say, Joe Sayers, Craig White, Anthony McGrath, Younis Khan and Jacques Rudolph, with capable batsmen to follow, should be up to the job.

But this season, of course, Yorkshire are without the remarkable Darren Lehmann, who signed off with 1,706 Championship runs last summer, and Michael Lumb, now with Hampshire, who hit 963.

Their departure means that replacements, Younis and Rudolph, need to score 2,669 runs between them just to achieve what Lehmann and Lumb managed.

McGrath, now happily settled with his native county again after a winter of turmoil, will be hoping to score at least the 1,293 runs he notched last year, and White and Sayers will be looking for major contributions, but if Yorkshire are to succeed it may be more a question of how and when they score their runs rather than just the sheer volume.

The fast bowling, like the batting, looks strong, but so it did in 2006 when it turned out to be most disappointing.

The only addition to the ranks this time is the return of Gough himself, which means that one of Matthew Hoggard, Jason Gillespie, Deon Kruis and Tim Bresnan is going to be surplus to requirements at least while Hoggard remains available.

The axe will probably fall on Kruis or Bresnan but will Gough be a better bet than either of them to take a clutch of early season wickets?

Gillespie, the fifth most successful Test bowler in Australia's history, undoubtedly under-performed last year with 36 wickets at 33.61 runs apiece and so did Kruis with 38 at 35.31, but I believe both will show an improvement this time.

Gillespie should be much more refreshed than last season, when he flew straight in from back-to-back Tests in Bangladesh after a busy summer with South Australia, and Kruis was slow to get into his stride after tearing a calf muscle on the eve of the first match.

If Gough and new director of professional cricket Martyn Moxon can work the magic between them and inspire the side, then performances in one-day cricket should improve dramatically.

To be honest, they can hardly get any worse, Yorkshire last season finishing way down the North Conference of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy (now the Friends Provident) and ending up bottom of the Second Division of the NatWest Pro40 competition.


Yorkshire's 2007 playing squad

Tim Bresnan, Gerard Brophy, Andrew Gale, Chris Gilbert, Jason Gillespie, Darren Gough, Simon Guy, Matthew Hoggard, Younus Khan, Deon Kruis, Mark lawson, Adam Lyth, Anthony McGrath, Steven Patterson, Richard Pyrah, Adil Rashid, Jacques Rudolph, Joe Sayers, Aimal Shahzad, Nick Thornicroft, Michael Vaughan, David Wainwright, Craig White, Greg Wood, Matthew Wood.