WE CERTAINLY won’t die wondering this week as we try to win our third County Championship title in a row by beating Middlesex.

Myself and the rest of the lads have been the first to admit we haven’t played our best cricket this year. We have struggled in patches when previously we’ve been the dominant force in the league.

We haven’t played brilliantly, so to still be in with a chance of winning the league is exciting.

The Yorkshire way is to attack, so it’s going to be a fascinating week.

We’ve toiled away all year, but now it comes down to just one game.

Somerset have a good chance of beating Notts, but I think whoever wins out of our game will be the winners. Somerset will obviously have their fingers crossed for a draw.

I didn’t really see our defeat against Somerset last week coming if I’m honest, and it was gutting.

We hadn’t played brilliantly, but then we had a run of three games against Notts, Hampshire and Durham where we looked like we were back on it again. Then, we just got outplayed. Fair play to Somerset.

If you lose a day of first-class cricket, you often lose the game. And getting bowled out for 145, we lost that day. We couldn’t claw it back.

But, over the last three years, we’ve created a special team, and it excites me because when it really matters somebody has stood up and been counted.

I’m hoping we play our best cricket of the year in the last round. If we do, there’s no team in the country that can cope with us.

We’ve had some great battles with Middlesex over the years. We beaten them at Headingley and Scarborough, and they’ve beaten us twice at Lord’s in the last two years. Hopefully it’s third time lucky.

The last time we beat them at Lord’s was in 2013 when I scored my first Championship hundred in the first innings. It was a special week in my career, one that I will remember for a long time.

It would be great if I could replicate that and finish the season off in style.

It must be so frustrating for Jason Gillespie and Martyn Moxon to have to deal with another bump in the road in terms of overseas players, with Jake Lehmann unavailable to us.

It’s a big disappointment because he’s played really nicely over the last month or so.

We have struggled for consistency with our overseas this summer. They seem to have been in for a game, out for a game. And that is tough to deal with.

Kane Williamson came to us off the back of two months in India, and he was knackered.

Then it was Travis Head, who got called up by Australia when we had a T20 quarter to play.

Now Jake has gone home to play a couple of warm-up games ahead of South Australia’s summer.

There seems to have been a lot of things not going our way this year, but hopefully we get a little bit of something just when we need it this week.

If it’s not meant to be and somebody else wins it, all credit to them. They will deserve it.

I have to admit, I like the squad England have picked for next month’s Test series in Bangladesh, although Keaton Jennings can feel a bit hard done by.

He’s scored 1,500 runs and has been a step above everyone in the whole competition. But, apart from that, it looks good.

Haseeb Hameed is a good, young player who has scored runs against us this year, while Ben Duckett has scored a hatful of runs in all forms of cricket.

If you’d want to make your Test debut against anyone, it would be Bangladesh.

The only left-field one is Gareth Batty, but he’s been just as good as anyone over the last few years. To have that experience in a young spin bowling group could be invaluable.

I also think the new city cricket T20 competition will be good for English cricket, although there are a lot of details yet to be finalised.

Something has to change with the English T20, and hopefully it will attract the best cricketers in the world if they can get the calendar right.

It should generate more interest in our domestic game.

The way cricket is going, it’s definitely loaded towards the white ball.

But, as a fan and player, I hope they still give the County Championship the time and space it deserves.

For me and many others, Test cricket is still the pinnacle. The ebbs and flows just can’t be replicated.

* Alex and his sponsors Pennine Business Partners are aiming to Hit Cancer for Six in 2016. They are donating £10 to the Laura Crane Youth Cancer Trust every time Alex hits a six or takes a catch, and are asking cricket lovers everywhere to support this great cause that provides special care and support to young people fighting cancer. Visit Pennine Business Partners page on Just Giving https://www.justgiving.com/Pennine-Business-Partners