Rashid: I couldn’t go through another season doing this

Cricket365
February 23, 2018

Yorkshire and England spinner Adil Rashid has admitted that his heart really isn’t in playing the longer formats of the game anymore.

Rashid has copped a lot of flak for his decision to sign a white-ball only contract with Yorkshire for 2018.

The leggie says the desire to play four-day cricket just wasn’t there anymore ahead of this season and denied that being overlooked for Test honours motivated his decision.

Speaking about the decision from New Zealand where he is part of England’s ODI squad Rashid said: “It’s very much my decision.

“It’s something that I’ve thought about and felt I had to do, and has been inside me for a little while.

“The enjoyment, the spark, the buzz. All that came into it. I couldn’t go through another season doing this — it could affect my performance, my bowling and that could easily rub off into other competitions and white-ball stuff.”

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Rashid has said that initially this new contract would only be for one year and will then be revaluated but it is tough to see him ever playing four-day cricket again.

He added: “Last year playing red-ball cricket for Yorkshire, my thought was that if I wasn’t giving 100 percent then I would be letting the team down and also myself down.

“It was a decision made purely because of how I felt playing red-ball cricket at this time. My mind’s not there, my heart’s not there, I’m letting the team down but also myself down.”

Rashid has no intention of being a trail blazer for others who might seek a white-ball only career.

He went on: “Personally, when I made that decision, I didn’t think about that — ‘Oh, people might follow, what if [they do]?’.

“That’s not my job, what people do or how they feel or ‘you may follow me or not follow me’.

“I just made the decision purely because of how I felt. If people want to follow — ‘he did that, so we can do it’ — then that’s their decision.”