Broader minds in the broad acres

Demonised from the outside, defensive on the inside, Yorkshire and its lack of Asian representation has become one of cricket's political hot potatoes over the past decade. Then came Adil Rashid. Rashid clearly has an immaculate sense of timing. In mid-July he took 4 for 60 and hit an unbeaten 119 for the Yorkshire Academy against Driffield in front of David Byas, Yorkshire's director of cricket.

That was all the evidence Byas needed to call up the 18-year-old allrounder for Yorkshire's game against Warwickshire at Scarborough three days later. And once again Rashid's timing was spot on.

Following Ismail Dawood and Ajmal Shahzad he is the third British-born Asian to play for Yorkshire. He claimed a wicket with his eighth delivery but it was his marathon spell on the third day that earned him an instant place in White-Rose folklore.

The tiny legspinner, looking for all the world like a schoolboy who had strayed into North Marine Road by mistake, bowled unchanged from half an hour before lunch until the game ended at 5.15pm.

He took six wickets for 67 runs from 28 overs, Yorkshire's best debut figures since Steve Kirby's 7 for 50 in 2001, and his boyish exuberance as he dashed in from the boundary to begin each new over won him a place in the hearts of the Yorkshire crowd.

Speaking after his Scarborough heroics, Rashid said: "I've had a lot of calls from friends but that doesn't faze me because it shows there is interest in the Asian community. I'm happy to be a role model for young Asians." Rashid learned his cricket in the Bradford League, where his elder brothers Haroon and Amar both play, and is keen to see other Asians follow him into the Yorkshire set-up.

The perception of a cricketing apartheid, where Asians play in their own leagues (such as the Quaid e Azam league, founded in 1980) and whites play in the traditional Yorkshire leagues, looks outdated.

The Asian presence is strongest in the Bradford, Huddersfield and Central Yorkshire Leagues and corresponds to the large Asian populations in those areas. But it is also extending beyond those areas.

Chris Gott is cricket chairman at Pudsey St Lawrence, one of Yorkshire's most venerable clubs which produced Len Hutton among others. Situated west of Leeds on the borders of Bradford, Pudsey does not have a large Asian population.

But, according to Gott, the club has a disproportionate number of Asian players. "I reckon between a quarter to a third of our juniors are now Asian," he says. "There are fewer in the senior sides but that will come. It is a matter of numbers. We have a scheme which targets a number of primary schools, including one which is 90% Asian. The take-up from that school has been huge. We are swamped, to be honest. It is an indication of how much young Asians want to play cricket."

Inertia, rather than overt racism, on the part of the county club may have been a root cause in the past of a lack of Asian recruitment - a sense of you come to us rather than reaching out into the Asian communities.

Lack of resources could play a part too. The Yorkshire Cricket Board has four development officers to cover a county that, it is believed, contains almost a fifth of all cricket played in the country. Only one of those development officers, Tony Bowry, who is of Caribbean origin, has a specific brief for ethnic minorities. Bowry is also the chief development officer for the board's Black and Ethnic Forum which was formed at the start of the 1990s "to raise racial awareness and advise on policy".

Gott feels there are so many Asian players in the Yorkshire leagues now that it is only a matter of time before the trickle of Rashids and Shahzads becomes a steady stream.