It's difficult to criticise Yorkshire's team selection when they enjoy a substantial lead at the top of the CricInfo Championship Division One table and are still in with a shout of a Lord's final this season by way of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy.

When you consider also that they made it to the semi-finals of the Benson and Hedges Cup they remain one of the most consistent sides in the country.

Yet not all of the players on their staff will be happy with the way things have gone for them this season and some will be wondering if they still have a future with the club.

Two who come into that category are spin bowlers James Middlebrook and Ian Fisher, who seem further away from regular selection than when the season started.

Yorkshire at the moment are preferring to include off-spinner Richard Dawson ahead of either Middlebrook or Fisher and the pair must have suffered further disappointment when Australian-born Andy Gray joined Dawson in the first team on a spinners' track at Northampton.

The official line is that Yorkshire want to explore every available spin option as they enter the final weeks of the season, but the decision to bring in Gray straight from Yorkshire League cricket with Scarborough is a bit of a snub for Middlebrook and Fisher, who are both on the staff.

One has a lot of sympathy with both of players because neither has let Yorkshire down on the occasions they have made it into the side.

They have not always taken a lot of wickets but it is difficult for slow bowlers to get into any sort of rhythm if they are not beavering away regularly.

It's been a particularly disappointing summer for Middlebrook who looked to have been thrown a lifeline at the end of last season when Yorkshire back-tracked on their original decision to release him and gave him a two-year contract instead.

Middlebrook was going to go mainly because of financial restraints but he won a reprieve by capturing career-best match figures of ten for 168 in the last Championship game of the season against Hampshire at Southampton.

Hampshire, as well as losing the match off the last ball and being relegated, also had eight points docked for preparing a poor pitch which greatly assisted the spinners. But Middlebrook still emerged with better figures than the great Shane Warne, who, in the two innings, had seven for 208.

Middlebrook could not have signed off more successfully but he has been included in only three Championship matches this time, the first of which at Chelmsford he recorded a career-best 84 with the bat.

Fisher also played in the Essex match in what was his sole appearance in the Championship so far and neither spinner has been used regularly in one-day cricket.

Middlebrook, who made his Yorkshire debut in 1998, has taken 49 first class wickets to date, and Fisher, who first played two years' earlier, stands on 43, but both must now be wondering how many further chances they will get.

It is possible that Dawson may be better than either of them, and he certainly caught the attention of new coach Wayne Clark on the pre-season tour of South Africa.

With his education at Exeter University now complete, this is the first summer Dawson has been fully available and he would have been given a chance at the start of the season if he had not broken a finger while fielding as substitute in the opening Championship match against Kent at Canterbury.

In my opinion, it is too early yet to say whether Dawson is superior to Middlebrook or Fisher but I still think it would have been wiser to have made him wait a while for an extended run.

Middlebrook and Fisher are still at the apprentice stages of their careers with Yorkshire but it looks as if another season will pass without them going noticeably backwards or forwards.