Are you in the mood for Shan Masood?
Yorkshire’s new captain is a Pakistan international batter who set the LV= Insurance County Championship alight last summer in Derbyshire colours. Left-handed Shan Masood scored 1,074 runs in only eight matches, including back-to-back April double centuries against Sussex and Leicestershire.
Masood, 33, averaged 60.38 across all cricket for the county, with his haul of 1,872 runs in 29 matches seeing him post 12 fifties and go beyond 100 on three occasions. It was form which attracted the attention of Ottis Gibson and Darren Gough, ultimately attracting him to Headingley on a two-year overseas deal.
Born in Kuwait, Masood studied at Durham University and played three matches for them in 2011. One of them was against Yorkshire at the Racecourse ground, the game in which wicketkeeper Barney Gibson became the youngest English first-class cricketer aged 15 years and 27 days.
By that stage, Masood had already debuted in first-class cricket in Pakistan, for Karachi Whites in October 2007. He has since gone on to top 9,000 runs with 21 centuries, with four of those scored in 25 Test Matches.
He has played all forms of international cricket for Pakistan, most recently against England in the final of the T20 World Cup in Melbourne in November 2022.
Nicknamed Shaani, he made his Test debut in 2013, his ODI debut in 2019 and his T20 debut in in 2022.
