Yorkshire CCC captain Shan Masood eager to embrace all ethnicities in his leading role

Speaking ahead of the club’s hosting of a second Eid Milan celebration to mark the end of Ramadan earlier this week, the 33-year-old Pakistan international said the club’s efforts to repair any damage done by Azeem Rafiq’s allegations of racism levelled at the club and the much-publicised fallout should be done on a wide-ranging scale.

"You should never put pressure on doing something specifically, I think it should be the whole," Masood told The Yorkshire Post.

"When you talk about Yorkshire it should be about representing the whole county, that’s what it should be doing and that’s what I’ve seen so far.

"That’s what I’ve always done as a person, I’ve been very lucky to go around a lot of major parts of the world and major parts on my own country, which had a lot of diversity.

"So knowing different people, knowing what cultures they come from, knowing what backgrounds they come from, respecting everyone’s ideas and ideologies and just trying to live happily under one roof – I think that is what the club is doing and that’s certainly what I’ve seen so far.”

Masood said the reputational damage suffered by the club following the allegations of a racist culture did not come into his thinking when agreeing to take on the captaincy for the next two seasons.

If anything, trying to remedy that image was an incentive.

"I love a challenge,” said Masood, who cited the club’s three former Pakistan captains Inzamam-ul-Haq, Younus Khan and Sarfaraz Ahmed as inspirational in his decision to move from Derbyshire.

"I know the county is going through a challenging time as well and they’ve taken up the baton of really moving forward.

"Like this event to mark Eid Milan, it’s a big event, me and my missus were excited to be here – just seeing the efforts the club is going to to engage the whole community.

"It’s an event that lies close to me and my family with where I come from, so just to engage everyone and bring people to the club, that’s a special thing to be a part of.

"I like it when everyone has a goal to work towards and this county certainly has a lot of things to look forward to.”

Yorkshire could definitely do with something to look forward to on the field. Masood’s arrival for the fifth County Championship game of the season could not spark a first win of the season, defeat at Durham in a game that could have gone either way leaving them at the foot of County Championship Division Two.

Attention now turns to T20 cricket with Yorkshire opening their Vitality Blast campaign against Birmingham Bears at Edgbaston on Saturday night.

“It’s about that one win, as soon as we get that I’m confident we’ll have some momentum behind our backs and we’ll take it forward with us for the rest of the season,” said Masood, who added that he had been welcomed into the dressing room as if he had always been there.

"We’re not labelling one format over the other to do well in, we want to play good cricket in all formats, and basically I’ve said to the boys I want us to be the team that everyone loves watching and I thought we showed good signs of that against Durham last week.”

More than 350 guests, including a number of community groups, Yorkshire and Northern Diamonds players and staff members attended the club’s Eid Milan celebrations.