IT'S been a good news week.

Not only were Yorkshire poised to win the County Championship today for the first time in 33 years but my back injury should only be a short term problem.

England arranged for me to have the scan which I had at Leeds yesterday.

It showed there was no stress fracture which was a great relief.

It seems the muscle fibres are slightly torn on my 11th rib on the left hand side.

I have been told by the specialist that it should only be a short term problem so I am still hoping to get a couple of games this season ahead of the winter tours.

I'm waiting for advice on how to look after the injury but I am just so relieved that it was not a stress fracture which can be really nasty if you are a fast bowler.

The Yorkshire boys have played brilliantly in my absence and I'm due to go to North Marine Road today to join in the celebrations - providing we win, of course!

Once again we have shown we can bowl sides out and did it again against Glamorgan even without three Test bowlers - myself, Darren Gough and Matthew Hoggard.

We are so strong all round now that we can afford to operate a bit of a rotation system and tell someone like Steve Kirby, who has done fantastically well for us, to take a break for a week and recharge his batteries.

We are oozing confidence throughout the team and put plenty of runs on the board at Scarborough with tons from Craig White, Matthew Wood and skipper David Byas.

I feel our success is just reward for all the hard work that the players have put in.

It's obviously been a great summer for our Australian coach Wayne Clark in his first season with the county.

He has brought the Australian mentality to our game. He devises a plan to win matches and we stick to it. He's extremely thorough and makes a point of talking to the players whether they have had a good day or a bad one. He's always showing you little areas where you can improve your game.

Wayne always takes a lot of notes on the opposition during matches and over the season we have built up quite a dossier of other players' strengths and weaknesses.

Hopefully by the time some of you have read this Yorkshire will be the new county champions.

Updated: 14:32 Friday, August 24, 2001