The purists won't be happy, but Yorkshire are now several days into a three-week break from Championship cricket and concentrating solely on the Twenty20 Cup in which they hope to make a much bigger impact this year.

A long gap in the Championship programme right in the middle of the season is far from ideal but it has to be acknowledged that the Twenty20 format pulls in large crowds, can be very exciting and is providing a financial lifeline for the 18 cash-strapped first-class counties.

England's extraordinary victory over Australia in their first Twenty20 international was watched by a capacity 15,000-plus crowd at the Rose Bowl and all tickets were sold for the confrontation well before the start of the year.

It is impossible these days to argue against a form of cricket which pulls in the punters on such a massive scale but will this season's much longer Twenty20 programme kill off the goose that lays the golden egg?

There must be a limit to the amount of crash, bang, wallop cricket that people want to watch. Yorkshire will be monitoring the situation closely to see if there is still the same enthusiasm towards the end of their eight-match North Division programme that there is bound to be when they open up with the Battle of the Roses clash at Headingley on Wednesday.

In the two years of Twenty20 cricket, Yorkshire have not got beyond the group stages and captain Craig White says his team will be pushing even harder to make it into the quarter-finals on July 18 and then Finals Day at the Brit Oval on July 30 when the extensively redeveloped ground will host 23,000 spectators.

White is looking forward to the Roses curtain-raiser but remembering last year's encounter on the ground still causes him to wince.

Although Yorkshire had already played two Twenty20 games by the time Lancashire came to Headingley, it was White's first appearance in that year's competition because he had only just come back from a hamstring injury.

The match was in its early stages when Andy Flintoff launched himself into a big drive. White back-pedalled at deep mid-on in an attempt to take a catch but pulled up lame instead.

"It all seemed so innocuous but I knew I was in trouble straight away because I was in great pain and could hardly walk," said White, who had seriously damaged a cartilage. A subsequent operation put him out for the rest of the season.

Yorkshire have been spending the past few days talking about Twenty20 strategy, also holding two practice games at Headingley.

Said White: "We want to make sure we are fully prepared for the challenge and that our squad has got exactly the right blend of youth and experience.

"We have put a lot of thought into it and we are going to give it a real crack."

In Twenty20's two years, Yorkshire have not yet made an indelible mark but they have still won half of their ten matches and they have lost only once in a home game.

That was last year against holders Leicestershire, who stacked up 221-3 to equal the competition record before Yorkshire made a gallant 211-6 reply. Leicestershire's Darren Maddy thrashed 111 off 60 balls with eight fours and six sixes, putting on 167 for the first wicket with Brad Hodge (78) - comfortably the highest partnership achieved by any county.

Undaunted by the size of their task, Yorkshire also went berserk with Phil Jaques plundering 92 from 49 deliveries with nine fours and five sixes. Yorkshire required 79 from the last four overs but still the game was far from dead because Jaques and Tim Bresnan thrashed 62 from three overs before both fell to boundary catches.

Yorkshire's highest individual Twenty20 score is the breath-taking 108 which Australian Ian Harvey took off a bemused and bewildered Lancashire at Headingley last year, his runs coming off 59 balls with 16 fours and two sixes. It was all too much for the Red Rose who had earlier made 168, largely due to four overs from Steve Kirby that cost 60 runs, the most a Yorkshire bowler has so far conceded.

Not all bowlers get slogged, however, and in the Roses game Andy Gray, now with Derbyshire, turned in Yorkshire's best figures to date of 3-18 off 3.1 overs. The most economical Yorkshire figures in a full stint are the 4-0-20-3 returned by Ryan Sidebottom against Durham at Headingley in 2003.

Fans looking for thrill-a-minute excitement are unlikely to be disappointed. Last year, 342 sixes rained down in Twenty20 cricket compared to 280 the year before, so be warned. If you're going to take your eye off the action wear a crash helmet.

Updated: 11:04 Saturday, June 18, 2005