IN decades to come it will be possible to recall Yorkshire's 2008 season by mention of just two words: Azeem Rafiq.

Through no fault of his own, the teenager off-spinner was at the heart of the administrative blunder that led to Yorkshire being kicked out of the Twenty20 Cup and denied the opportunity of a lucrative pay day.

Yorkshire's failure to properly register Rafiq, who took part in the final group match against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, overshadowed all else during a season that once again failed to deliver where it mattered most – in the County Championship.

Promotion in the Pro40 League was one thing, but a
seventh-place finish in the Championship – and relegation avoided only by a hair's breadth – quite another.

Following a Rafiq affair that was the cricketing equivalent of Manchester United being kicked out of the Champions League for failing to get their paperwork in order, it was perhaps remarkable that the season did not implode entirely.

The whole episode seemed to knock Yorkshire off their stride; sitting on top of the Championship and semi-finalists in the Friends Provident Trophy one minute, they were caught up in a firestorm of controversy that triggered a near-disastrous change of form. To that extent, the players and coaching staff deserved credit for pulling together when, privately at least, they felt badly let down.

Rewind to last April and all the talk at Headingley Carnegie was not of secretaries on maternity leave and people neglecting to process forms, but the search for silverware after six barren years.

Although we will never know whether Yorkshire would have won the Twenty20 Cup, we can at least say their one-day form was significantly better than in 2007 – emphasised by the semi-final place in the Trophy and the minimum requirement of Pro40 promotion.

Yorkshire were competitive in all three limited-overs competitions and thereby fulfilled one of retiring captain Darren Gough's principal ambitions when he returned to the club.

Gough himself captured 21 List A wickets at 24.28 – only Tim Bresnan (24 at 20.20) and Richard Pyrah (24 at 24.37) took more – and will be a hard act to follow in the one-day arena.

Not so in the Championship, however, where the former England fast bowler managed only eight games and nine wickets at 58.66.

During a season in which he turned 38, Gough struggled to cope with the physical demands of four-day cricket – although an outstanding spell on the final day of his first-class career, against Somerset at Scarborough, proved that the spirit remained willing even if the flesh had grown weak.

The random nature of Gough's appearances in the Championship had a destabilising influence and did little for consistency of selection, but Yorkshire suffered a lowly finish in the Championship not because of Gough's arbitrary showings but because they did not perform consistently enough to win a title that was just about everyone's for the taking.

It said everything for the congested nature of one of the closest Championships in years that had Kent beaten Yorkshire at Scarborough at the end of August, when Yorkshire's last-wicket pair of Deon Kruis and Matthew Hoggard somehow held out, Kent would have gone top of the table and Yorkshire, rather than Kent, would have been relegated.

Although Yorkshire were hardly ever beaten heavily in the manner of classic relegation candidates, they were a bit like a football team who often found themselves 2-0 up only to relinquish their lead through basic errors.

Principally, Yorkshire's Achilles heel was a frustrating tendency to lose wickets in clusters from positions of strength, which led to a number of fatal collapses that left Martyn Moxon, the county's director of cricket, banging his head against innumerable brick walls.

Indeed, it would have been entirely fitting had Yorkshire's capitulation to 80-6 on the first day of the final match of the season, against Sussex at Hove, condemned them to Division Two, and that they recovered to 400-9dec represented one of the most astonishing comebacks of any year.

For that they had Adil Rashid (111) and David Wainwright (104 not out) to thank, the young spinners adding 140 for the ninth-wicket in a rescue act that would have made Red Adair emerald with envy. Rashid's late flourish put a better gloss on his efforts with the bat than had seemed likely, but his bowling was sensational during the second half of the summer and so nearly won him a place on England's winter tour to India.

Fifty wickets in nine games spoke for itself, while Tim Bresnan (45) and Matthew Hoggard (42) also captured vital wickets, without the latter ever really suggesting he was going to force his way back into the England fold.

The least said about Yorkshire's top-order batting the better, and it was one of the more astonishing statistics of this or any other season that the county's 10th-wicket partnership averaged more than their first-wicket partnership.

Joe Sayers lost form, Michael Vaughan never looked like rediscovering his form, and injuries restricted Chris Taylor to just four Championship appearances.

The redoubtable Jacques Rudolph was once again the mainstay of the batting and the only player to pass 1,000 runs. Andrew Gale improved significantly to accumulate 899 runs at 39.08, although Anthony McGrath was unable to reach the stellar heights of previous summers as he returned 728 runs at 34.66.

The middle/lower-middle order did not pull up trees – Bresnan far and away the leading light with 506 Championship runs at 33.73 – and it said everything that South African pace bowler Deon Kruis averaged more than Vaughan, Sayers, Taylor, Rashid, Gerard Brophy and Richard Pyrah, although the latter impressed in the one-day game.

Adam Lyth, 21, showed great promise on his way to 645 runs at 30.71, and only Rudolph bettered his total of six Championship half-centuries.

The emergence of young players such as Lyth – and Yorkshire's willingness to throw them into battle – was good to see and represents the best way forward for next summer.

The issue of the captaincy remains to be sorted (it is likely to be McGrath or Rudolph), as does the identity of Yorkshire's overseas player.

Officially, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, the Pakistan pace bowler, is contracted for a further year but his deal with the Indian Cricket League side Lahore Badshahs causes Yorkshire problems in terms of a Twenty20 Champions League that does not permit ICL players.

Apart from some useful pinch-hitting performances in the one-day game, Rana has not performed to the standards expected and, if possible, should be jettisoned in favour of an overseas batsman.