Yorkshire confront bowling crisis

YORKSHIRE'S plans for the new season were last night plunged into disarray.

Chief executive Stewart Regan admitted it is "highly unlikely" Australian pace bowler Ryan Harris will be able to play for the county due to international commitments.

And New Zealand quick bowler Daryl Tuffey – signed as cover for Harris at the start of the season – broke his left hand playing against Australia in Wellington yesterday and will almost certainly not be coming to Headingley Carnegie.

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It means Yorkshire – who also face losing Tim Bresnan and possibly Ajmal Shahzad to international commitments this summer – face a desperate race against time to sign another overseas bowler to assist an inexperienced line-up.

That line-up has been found wanting during the ongoing pre-season tour in Barbados, where Yorkshire have lost their opening three one-day games, including an embarrassing 58-run defeat to the University of West Indies.

Yorkshire's seam bowling resources were already depleted following Matthew Hoggard's move to Leicestershire and Deon Kruis's retirement.

Unless they can find another quality strike bowler at the 11th hour, they could be heavily reliant on spinners Adil Rashid, David Wainwright and Azeem Rafiq – themselves inexperienced – if they are to stake a serious claim at the right end of the County Championship.

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It brings into sharper focus the mistake Yorkshire made in allowing the likes of Nottinghamshire's Ryan Sidebottom and Gloucestershire's Steve Kirby to leave, who could have helped form the nucleus of a Championship-winning attack.

Commenting on Yorkshire's double overseas whammy, Regan said: "If I was a betting man, I'd say Ryan Harris is highly unlikely to come to the club following his recent great form for Australia, while the timing of Daryl's injury is particularly cruel.

"Unfortunately, it's as though the cricketing gods are conspiring against us.

"An enormous amount of hard work had gone into identifying two very competent overseas players and now it looks as though neither will be coming to Yorkshire.

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"We'll talk about the situation with Martyn Moxon (Yorkshire's director of professional cricket) over the next few days but we'll probably look to sign a replacement.

"That's easier said than done, however, because it's difficult to sign overseas players at the best of times and particularly difficult at the 11th hour."

Yorkshire's latest overseas crisis – following sundry problems with the Pakistani pace bowler Rana Naved-ul-Hasan – highlights how difficult it is to recruit quality players owing to the preposterous glut of international games and Twenty20 fixtures.

Since joining Yorkshire last October, Harris, 30, has suddenly become an integral part of Australia's team and yesterday helped them to a 10-wicket victory over the Kiwis when he captured 4-77 on Test debut.

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Yorkshire are urgently awaiting confirmation from Cricket Australia as to Harris's likely availability for the next six months.

But the fact CA pulled him out of his Indian Premier League contract with Deccan Chargers to enable him to tour New Zealand suggests they are extremely unlikely to release him for county games, with a number of high-profile international matches looming.

Harris is likely to be wanted by Australia for the Twenty20 World Cup in the Caribbean, which runs from April 30-May 16, as well as the tour of England in midsummer which features one-day internationals against the host nation plus Tests and Twenty20 internationals against Pakistan.

Tuffey, meanwhile, faces up to six weeks on the sidelines, ruling him out of five County Championship games and effectively spanning the period he should have been deputising for Harris. The 31-year-old was struck by a rising ball from Mitchell Johnson on his way to 47 not out at the Basin Reserve and will have surgery tomorrow to repair a broken metacarpal bone.

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Tuffey's Yorkshire deal was already in doubt owing to his likely involvement in the Twenty20 World Cup, with New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori last night admitting the player had been hoping to enjoy a break ahead of that tournament – which came as news to Yorkshire.

"Daryl is down in the dumps at the moment," said Vettori. "He wanted to finish the season on a high and play in the next Test match in Hamilton and then have a bit of a break.

"Now it's all a bit touch-and-go for him. He's a guy who has been pretty consistent for us since he's come back into the team and has done a really good job."