Jonny Bairstow poised for Yorkshire return in County Championship

Jonny Bairstow is set to make his season debut for Yorkshire this week as the County Championship resumes after a six-week hiatus.

Bairstow has only played two first-class games for his home county since the end of the 2020 season due to his England and IPL commitments. He is yet to feature for Yorkshire in any format this season, having taken a short break from the game between the T20 World Cup and the start of the Hundred, where he represented Welsh Fire.

But he will return for Thursday's fixture against Sussex at Scarborough, with Yorkshire sitting just outside of the two promotion places in Division Two. They are four points behind second-placed Middlesex heading into the final five games of the season, and can close the 27-point gap on leaders Sussex this week.

Bairstow made 123 runs in seven innings for Welsh Fire this season

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Bairstow lost his place in England's Test team after failing to reach 40 on their tour to India this year, and appears unlikely to feature in their T20I and ODI series against Australia in September. He declared at the start of the Hundred that "all I want to do is play for England", but was short of runs for Welsh Fire, with 123 runs and a single half-century across seven innings.

"I spoke to Jonny, and he still has ambitions of getting back into the England team," Ottis Gibson, Yorkshire's head coach, said last week. "When he was coming back from his injury last year, our medical team and coaches - everybody associated with the club - helped him get back into the England fold.

"If it's that we need to do that again with him, give him some love and get him into a position where he puts good performances in, everybody benefits from that. Jonny Bairstow is a serious cricketer anyway, but when he has a point to prove, he's even more dangerous. Hopefully, we can take advantage of that."

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Yorkshire confirmed on Monday that Bairstow is available to play at Scarborough after a shoulder niggle, but his availability for the final four games of the season has not yet been confirmed. They will be without their captain Shan Masood this week, who is with Pakistan's Test squad ahead of their series against Bangladesh.

The club announced earlier this month that Gibson will leave his job at the end of the season, and are also in the process of recruiting a new director of cricket, having advertised for the role earlier in the summer.

Chris Silverwood, who recently left his job as Sri Lanka coach, has declared his interest in the head coach vacancy: "I haven't spoken to anybody as yet," he told talkSPORT. "Would it interest me? Absolutely, it's my old county and I have a great love for Yorkshire."