JACK Leaning returns to Yorkshire's LV= County Championship team today, with coach Jason Gillespie urging the young batsman not to dwell on being left out last week.

The 21-year-old has enjoyed a memorable second full season of first-team cricket, one which will end with a second Division One winners' medal.

Yorkshire could secure back-to-back titles during today's opening day of their clash with Middlesex at Lord's, given they only need five points from their 14th match of the campaign.

And they are expected to be presented with the trophy this week if they finish the job, with confirmation from the ECB likely today.

Leaning is the county's second leading run-scorer in four-day cricket with 785 runs from 12 appearances.

But his three hundreds all came before the end of June and his last eight innings have yielded only 128 runs.

For last week's win over Somerset at Headingley, Gillespie had Jonny Bairstow and Adam Lyth available – along with Australian Aaron Finch, who had just scored a second XI hundred.

Bairstow and Lyth were always going to play but he opted for Finch ahead of Leaning. Today, Bairstow and Finch are unavailable due to international duty.

Gillespie said: "I'd be highly confident that Jack will play. He has a couple of little things he needs to work on in his game, and he's well aware of that, but he'll be fine.

"We've got every confidence in the world in Jack and we've shown that. All you need to do is look earlier in the season when I left out Aaron Finch and backed Jack.

"I left out Glenn Maxwell, who went and played second-team cricket. I left out two internationals and Jack was retained.

"As I explained it to him 'there's no other way to say this, we've got seven batsmen and six batting spots'. Someone had to miss out."

Gillespie, meanwhile, is hopeful the majority of his internationals will be available for the final two matches against Hampshire and Sussex, although he is unsure about Joe Root.

Yorkshire (from): Gale (captain), Ballance, Bresnan, Brooks, Fisher, Hodd (wicketkeeper), Leaning, Lees, Lyth, Middlebrook, Patterson, Rhodes, Sidebottom.