‘I want to make a difference there’: Shan Masood ready to lead Yorkshire

Shan Masood has been keeping one eye on the county scores while in Lahore this past week. In between Pakistan’s T20 games against England, he was watching what was going on in Leeds where, on Wednesday, Yorkshire’s head coach, Ottis Gibson, announced Masood would be club captain next year after his move from Derbyshire. He is only the second overseas player to be the county’s skipper. “It is,” he says, “one of the biggest achievements of my career.”

And he was watching what was happening at Edgbaston where, a day later, his new team were relegated to the Division Two of the championship as a consequence of Warwickshire beating Hampshire.

“There’s no point dwelling on it,” Masood says. “You need to keep moving forward. That’s the game.

“Too often as cricketers we get stuck in the past. We’ve seen mighty teams fall and we’ve seen people at ground level go all the way up, so you always have to believe that nothing is permanent. Every day is a new day, and every season is a new challenge. Whether it’s Division One or Division Two, I’m personally not bothered.

“What I’m bothered about is the direction we head in and the way we play our cricket and then, hopefully, the byproduct of that will be the results.” There are, he says, still three trophies to win.

You wonder if Masood realises how hard it is going to be to move on from the past at a club that sometimes seems to be stuck in it.

Yorkshire are still reeling from the fallout from the Azeem Rafiq scandal, the rancorous sacking of 16 backroom staff, and the loss of three senior players in David Willey, Tom Kohler-Cadmore and Steve Patterson. But he says he is going into it with his eyes open.

“I’m a very straightforward person. I try to gather information off of everyone.