…and just as one Yorkshire spinning all-rounder disappears off to England duty, up pops another one from the academy…

If you viewed Azeem Rafiq’s debut season of first team action purely in terms of raw stats, they might not seem to set him apart from a number of other young cricketers making their first steps into the professional game. But, as ever, statistics tell you quantity, rather than necessarily revealing quality. They don’t tell you how the travails of last season – with the intense media interest surrounding the whole 20/20 ineligibility affair – have been put behind him. They certainly don’t reflect how a young man, only just turned eighteen, has forced his way into first team contention from the academy side, via only a handful of second team games, and in the face of competition for his place from the highly impressive David Wainwright.

But Rafiq, it seems, is a precocious talent. One capable of captaining the England U19 side as well as Yorkshire’s 2^nd XI, and someone with enough confidence to be the loudest player on the pitch even then stationed on the boundary edge. There’s ability to back that up too, as useful bowling spells on his debut where supplemented by a hard hitting, and if we’re honest, unexpected, century in the game at Worcestershire.

Of course, there’s still much work to do with his game before he’s ready to be a regular in the first team, but it would already appear that the mental side of the game is something he may have little trouble coping with. And with captaincy of the academy and second XI already on his CV, it also seems that Yorkshire have him in mind as a long term candidate to take the reins of the first team. Whether that happens may depend if his bowling can replicate the success he’s found in the leagues in the hasher environment of County Championship division one and whether, even with Rashid on England duty, Yorkshire can find space for both himself and Wainwright in the same side.

Championship – 4 matches, 117 runs @ 23.40, 10 wickets @ 48.70

Twenty/20 Cup – 4 matches, 18 runs @ 18.00, 4 wickets @ 24.75

Pro40 – 2 matches, 1 wicket @ 36.00

(Rafiq photo: by kind permission, Dave Morton)