YORKSHIRE'S top two cricket officials, David Byas and Geoff Cope, have had one eye on the action at the Scarborough Cricket Festival this week and another sharply focussed on players' contracts for next season.

Director of cricket Byas and director of operations Cope have found time for preliminary talks on the subject but a final decision on who goes and who stays is not expected to be taken by the county club's four-man management board until around the end of the season.

With Yorkshire already working on a reduced staff, however, it is difficult to imagine that too many players will be shown the door, even though results have been disappointing to say the least.

It can also be argued that Yorkshire's failure to make any real impact is mainly the fault of injury and loss of form by senior players while the club itself is also to blame to some extent for releasing players over the past few years that it may have been wiser to hang on to.

Among those who could have a question mark hanging over them if only because they have not commanded a regular place this summer are wicketkeeper Simon Guy, batsman Chris Taylor and all-rounder Vic Craven.

Fast bowler Nick Thornicroft is another who has scratched the surface with the first team without being given a proper run and one wonders whether Yorkshire will want to keep Andy Gray on their books now that Richard Dawson has re-established himself as the chief off-spinner and received his county cap.

Extra pressure has been put on all these players by the emergence in the senior side for the first time this season of Oxford Blue Joe Sayers, fellow left-hander Andrew Gale, leg-spinner Mark Lawson, all-rounder Richard Pyrah and wicketkeeper Ismail Dawood.

It is likely that all of these will be very much to the fore at the start of next summer's programme, making life difficult for those players one rung above them who will still be with Yorkshire.

Releasing a young player or two, however, is not going to make a tremendous amount of difference to next season's results, and I think it is more important that Yorkshire can satisfy themselves that they will be getting more cricket out of captain Craig White and senior fast bowler Chris Silverwood than they have done for the past few summers.

Injuries and some international calls have meant that White has played in only 30 first-class games for Yorkshire over the past three years and he managed just seven this time before a cartilage operation ended his season.

It's a similar story with Silverwood who figured in 32 games from 2001-2003 and has also played in seven so far this season in among periods out with ankle and knee injuries.

Silverwood, fit again but not chosen at Scarborough, plans to have a post-season operation to clean up his ankle and, like White, he hopes that he will be injury-free next summer, yet the fitness record of both players is nothing to write home about.

The pair of them are unarguably top cricketers with the proven ability to make key contributions but it would be foolish of Yorkshire to extend their contracts too far into the future, otherwise they could find themselves paying hefty wage bills for players who are out of the action far more often than they are in it.

Money remains tight for Yorkshire but in deciding on contracts they must make sure they do not release players that they later wish they had retained and a couple of cases in point are Worcestershire off-spinner, Gareth Batty, and Glamorgan fast bowler and hard hitting batsman, Alex Wharf.

Batty has just earned a place in England's squad for this winter's Test tour of South Africa and Wharf did a fantastic job on his first one-day appearance for England in the opening NatWest Challenge against India at Trent Bridge on Wednesday.

A last-minute replacement for the injured Kabir Ali, the 29-year-old Wharf blazed the trail by claiming the wickets in his first three overs of superstars Ganguly, Laxman and Dravid.

It brought back memories of his Championship debut for Yorkshire against Warwickshire at Scarborough in 1994 when he hit the headlines in the Evening Press by claiming the great Brian Lara as his first victim.

Wharf, a product of the Yorkshire Academy at Bradford Park Avenue, moved on to Nottinghamshire at the end of 1997 and spent two seasons at Trent Bridge before moving on to Glamorgan where he established himself with bat and ball.

How Yorkshire must wish they could re-sign Wharf now but formal approaches are not allowed until the end of the season and even then Glamorgan are not likely to want to part with their new found hero.

Updated: 10:29 Saturday, September 04, 2004