Ottis Gibson reveals reasons behind a glut of runs in the County Championship

Yorkshire head coach Ottis Gibson has opined that a glut of runs have been witnessed in the ongoing County Championship across both divisions and that is due to flat pitches and a sense of opportunity felt by the batters across the country.

With plenty of batting spots up for grabs in the Test team, several local batsmen including Harry Brook, James Bracey, Ben Compton have put their best foot forward thus far by consistently accumulating big scores.

As many as 53 hundreds have been hammered by batsmen across both divisions of the championship thus far.

"If you are a batter in England at the moment, the way things have been for the last 12 to 18 months, you should sense an opportunity," Gibson was quoted by the official website of Yorkshire.

"Whichever batter gets off to a really good start this summer could find themselves in one of those top three or four batting spots," he said.

"Brooky's putting his hand up, others around the country are. I can only imagine that's a good thing for England going forward," the former Caribbean cricketer added.

Gibson also spoke about the kind of surfaces that have been in play this season. Yorkshire have played at Northamptonshire and Bristol thus far and the former England bowling coach reckoned that both pitches offered minimal assistance to the bowlers.

He also revealed that not much swing was on offer during both games. 

However, the former South African coach applauded the batsmen for their run-accumulation, especially James Bracey.

"We've played two games, and the ball has not swung a lot. The pitch at Northampton, the ball nipped around a bit first innings, and then it became very flat. Even then, it was so cold on the last day that the ball didn't swing. That could have something to do with it," the 53-year-old said.

"The pitch we played on in Bristol was a very good pitch, I thought. It still offered you assistance if you bent your back on the final day. And it definitely started to spin. At Northampton, it didn't even spin," added the former Windies cricketer.

The Barbados-born applauded James Bracey and Harry Brook for their centuries and emphasized that he believed England always had some good batters in proper conditions.

"But there has been some good batting. James Bracey scored a very good hundred against us and Brooky scored a very good hundred. County cricket gets a battering all the time in the media, every time England lose an Ashes series away. But I've always felt there's some very good batters around if the conditions are right," he concluded.

Yorkshire will play in the 4th round of the County Championship against Kent at Leeds from April 28.