YORKSHIRE are not travelling to South Africa to make up the numbers according to skipper Andrew Gale.

The White Rose squad head for the Champions League with Gale confident in the belief that his side are among the world’s best Twenty20 teams.

They first face a qualifying round where they will take on Sri Lankan side UVA Next on Tuesday and, the following day, Trinidad & Tobago.

“We go out there with nothing to lose and everything to gain,” said the Yorkshire captain.

“We’ve watched footage of both teams and they’ve got some class players, which is what we expect, but on our day we’re as good as any team in the world.”

Yorkshire reached the Champions League for the first time after reaching the Friends Life T20 final, where they lost to Hampshire on their finals-day debut.

“We used our fielding to give us the upper hand in a lot of T20 games this year,” said Gale.

“You can’t always control what happens with bat and ball, but we can control what happens in the field. We set a precedent with our fielding in the domestic T20 so we need to take that out there.”

Yorkshire are without England internationals Tim Bresnan and Jonny Bairstow, but batsman Joe Root, recently called up to the national squad, travels.

Yorkshire squad: Ashraf, Ballance, Gale, Hannon-Dalby, Hodgson, Jaques, Lyth, Miller, Patterson, Rafiq, Rashid, Root, Sidebottom, Wardlaw, Wilson.