Yorkshire have plenty to do during the next three months if they are to match last season’s LV= County Championship title triumph and add to that with limited overs success.

The White Rose county have yet to get out of third gear in the Championship and first in the NatWest T20 Blast, a format they just cannot master no matter how hard they try.

It was always unrealistic to expect them to dominate four-day cricket like 2014, with regular picks Adam Lyth, Adil Rashid, Jonny Bairstow and Liam Plunkett all unavailable for the first three matches due to England Test duty in the Caribbean.

And they continue to be hit by international calls. The majority of their England players are unavailable for next week’s crucial meeting with leaders Durham at Emirates Durham due to the pre-Ashes training camp in Spain.

Previewing this week’s game with Nottinghamshire at Headingley, Andrew Gale was spot on with the assessment that the champions are only playing at 60 or 70 percent of their capability.

Only Jack Leaning and Bairstow have stood out consistently with the bat, with Alex Lees’ form a particular disappointment after an excellent start in the first two matches against Worcestershire and Notts.

With the ball, they have shown flashes of top form.

Second innings at Worcester in the opening week was one, while they were excellent in home wins against Hampshire and, most recently, Middlesex. But they could have been better against Notts at Trent Bridge, Warwickshire at Headingley and Somerset at Taunton.

Still, the fact that such a level of performance has been good enough to secure three wins and three draws from six matches shows the strength and quality that Yorkshire possess.

If you marked Yorkshire’s opening six Championship matches as a B, their T20 displays would be closer to C minus.

Players and coaches spoke in pre-season about the need for improvement after years of underachievement.

The club went out and recruited Australian white ball stars Aaron Finch, in his second season with the club, and Glenn Maxwell as their two overseas players in a bid to turn things around, while they showed glimpses of going in the right direction by winning a four-team T20 tournament in Dubai in March.

But, actually, nothing has changed.

Finch and Maxwell have failed to fire with the bat aside from the latter’s blistering 90 in the win over Notts at Headingley on Friday, and they have reached the halfway stage of their North Division campaign with a record of four defeats and three wins.

They bowled poorly at the death in the Roses loss against Lancashire, although bowling well might not have been enough to stop Jos Buttler in full flight.

And they were timid with the bat against Birmingham Bears at Edgbaston on Sunday in only making 132-7, a total the champions reeled in with eight balls to spare.