Glamorgan sign South African Rudolph

Jacques Rudolph, the South Africa batsman, has signed a two-year deal with Glamorgan, subject to receiving clearance from Cricket South Africa.

Rudolph is highly experienced in international and county cricket and is set to replace Marcus North as Glamorgan's overseas player for 2014 and 2015. The deal provides a solid foundation for Glamorgan's new head coach, set to be appointed in the close season.

Rudolph has scored 2,622 runs at 35.43 in 48 Tests and over 16,000 first-class runs, many of them in the County Championship for Yorkshire, where he played from 2007 to 2011. He spent time last season playing for Surrey.

Cricket South Africa still need to ratify the deal but South Africa have a very little cricket scheduled on the future tours programme for the 2014 and 2015 British summers: two tests, three ODIs and a T20 against Zimbabwe pencilled in for August 2014, the same matches in Bangladesh a year later and three Tests in Sri Lanka in May 2015.

The future tours programme is of course subject to change but prima facie, Rudolph should be available for most of the next two British seasons.

Hugh Morris, who will shortly join Glamorgan as chief executive and director of cricket, said: "Signing a player of Jacques Rudolph's undoubted capabilities and experience is a great boost ahead of the new season.

"With an increasingly heavy first-class schedule it will be a huge advantage to have a world-class opening batsman available to us. I look forward to welcoming Jacques to Glamorgan."

Rudolph added: "I'm delighted to be joining Glamorgan on a two-year deal. I enjoyed my time playing for Yorkshire so I'm looking forward to the challenge at Glamorgan and hopefully enjoying similar success."