Rashid to focus on white ball cricket

The Yorkshire County Cricket Club can confirm that leg-spinning all-rounder Adil Rashid will not play red-ball cricket for the White Rose in 2018.

Rashid, now a firm fixture in England’s one-day and T20 teams, recently approached Director of Cricket Martyn Moxon to outline his plans for the forthcoming campaign. These new terms were accepted and the Club will now work with Rashid to facilitate his request, with a review of the situation anticipated to take place in the Autumn.

The Club remain firmly in favour of Rashid continuing to play red-ball cricket for the county, but respect his desire and we are in the process of renegotiating a contract which reflects his decision to solely play white ball cricket.

“It’s obviously Adil’s decision,” Moxon told yorkshireccc.com. “He contacted me recently and explained that he wanted to focus solely on white-ball cricket and concentrate on becoming the best white-ball cricketer he could possibly be.

“From my point of view it’s disappointing because I think Adil has got the ability to play in all three formats of the game, not only at county level, but also at international level. It is Adil’s decision and we have to respect that.

“I’ve said many times that the skills required for the three formats of the game are so different, so it is a challenge for players to play in all three – in international cricket you don’t have many players that do. This is the challenge that players and coaches face in domestic cricket. We need our players to be able to play in all three formats predominantly. You get the odd specialist, but county setups can’t accommodate specialists at this moment in time. Whether that will happen in the future, we’ll wait and see. We really need to get our players skilled up in all three formats. Adil obviously feels he can’t achieve that at the moment.

“He’s been an important member of our white-ball team over the last number of years and is a potential matchwinner. We’re pleased to have him playing white-ball cricket for us and, with his sole focus being on that, you’d expect his skills to improve.”

Chasing the T20 money is the modern cricketers new dream. I remember a time when it was every cricketers dream to play Test cricket. These cherry picking arrangements need to be stopped.