They could be crowned champions again next week, if they beat Somerset at home and collect 18 more points than Middlesex manage away to Warwickshire.
Yorkshire took 11 points from a high-scoring game in which Sussex replied with 493 for seven to the visiting team’s first innings of 494, but Gillespie, the Yorkshire head coach, said: “We are not looking any further forward than our next two games, the Royal London Cup quarter-final at Essex on Thursday and then the championship match at home to Somerset.
“Those are our next challenges and anything else is too far ahead for us to be thinking about it all. We will take the points from this match and move on.”
The champions, however, still have four matches to play next month and seem to be cruising to the title. Indeed, they are unbeaten in the championship, with eight wins from 12 games, and also have a match in hand on their nearest rivals, Middlesex, who are chasing spiritedly and closed the gap at the top of the first division to 30 points when they beat Durham yesterday.
Gillespie revealed that he and his players often speak about “playing the perfect game” in terms of their continued motivation and search for improvement. “There is nothing wrong with aspiring to that, even if you know you will most probably never get it,” he added.
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Meanwhile, selection continues to be a tricky business for Gillespie and Andrew Gale, the Yorkshire captain, with England players — bar a rested Joe Root — now returning for the Royal London Cup fixture at Chelmsford.
“Everyone wants to play, and there’s always disappointment,” Gillespie said, acknowledging the sheer depth of quality in the Yorkshire squad. “But all our players buy into the squad mentality that you have to compete across different formats, and I just try to be honest with them about our thinking when I have to explain why they are being left out of a particular match.”
It is a problem, of course, that every other county in the land would love to have.
For the moment, and especially with Gary Ballance’s 165 against Sussex showing that being back in the county ranks has triggered a return to form after his early-summer travails with England, Yorkshire look unstoppable.