GARY Ballance is confident there is plenty of room for improvement both team wise and personally ahead of next season with Yorkshire.

Ballance, 29, was the county’s leading run-scorer in two of the three competitions this summer, posting 975 in the Specsavers County Championship and 294 in the Royal London One-Day Cup.

But Yorkshire’s failure to qualify for the knockout stages of both the One-Day Cup and the Vitality Blast was a huge disappointment.

Yorkshire also only finished fifth in the Championship’s top flight, with five wins, but in Ballance, Tom Kohler-Cadmore (828) and Adam Lyth (804), they had a third of the Division One’s top nine run-scorers.

“As a group, the good thing is we’ve improved on last year,” said Ballance. “We’ve got some big scores and had guys who’ve scored hundreds.

“Also, it’s another year of experience for our young batters. They will only get better. There’s a lot of talent there.”

Generally through the 2019 Championship campaign, Yorkshire batted better in their second innings.

Ballance said: “When you score first-innings runs, you’re always driving the game. We did that at Hampshire and against Somerset at Headingley. We really bossed the games and got two good victories.

“As a whole, we can be better at that. But from last year to this, there’s definitely been an improvement.

“Generally, as a bowling unit we’ve been really good. We’ve played on different types of wickets. But most of the time we’ve been able to take 20 wickets.

“We have a good variety with Duanne Olivier, Ben Coad, Steve Patterson, Tim Bresnan and Matt Fisher. I could name a few others as well.

“Also, having Keshav Maharaj for five games, he was brilliant.

“In the red ball, if we keep improving then we’ll be challenging for a trophy. That would be great.

“When it comes to white ball, it’s about consistency. We’ve had guys playing great knocks and some five-fors with the ball, but we just can’t quite do it over the course of the whole tournament. We have to find a way.”

Ballance was denied the chance to reach 1,000 Championship runs when the season-ending clash with Warwickshire at Edgbaston was rain ruined.

Yorkshire were 261-2 at tea on the first day, but not another ball was bowled.

Looking back, Ballance believes a solid defence was the secret to his success.

He said: “Last year I was a bit inconsistent and didn’t back my defence as much as this year. Going into this season, I worked on that and felt really solid.

“Knowing I could back my defence in any conditions against any bowler gave me a lot of confidence.

“I’m sure going into this winter there are things which I can improve. I’ll keep trying to get better.”