Yorkshire grab fourth overseas player

There was a time when Yorkshire took pride in their dogged refusal to sign overseas players of any description. Those days have long gone. By completing their close-season recruitment with the signing of Kane Williamson, they now have four non-English players popping in at various stages of the season.

The growth of domestic T20 leagues, as well as the proliferation of international cricket, makes a full-season signing increasingly rare, but Yorkshire are seeking consistency by recruiting players over more than one season so that they settle immediately into the environment.

Williamson, the New Zealand batsman, who has spent time at Headingley over the past two seasons this time returns for the last three Championship matches of the season, in anticipation that Yorkshire will be pressing hard to retain their Championship crown.

Jason Gillespie, Yorkshire's coach, regards him so highly that he hailed him as one of the bargains of the IPL auction this week - Hyderabad paid $128,000 for him, adding to a heavily-stocked foreign contingent that also includes three English players in Kevin Pietersen, Eoin Morgan and Ravi Bopara - but it is four-day cricket where his emphasis will fall for Yorkshire.

He will join them after New Zealand's limited-overs tour of Zimbabwe and South Africa, which is due to end early September. He had an outstanding time in 2014, helping Yorkshire to their first Championship title since 2001, scoring 629 Championship runs at an average of 57, and hitting more than 900 Test runs at an average of 61, including 242 not out against Sri Lanka last month as he shared a record partnership for the sixth wicket with BJ Watling.

"I'm delighted to be returning to Yorkshire for my third spell," Williamson said. "There is a brilliant culture at Yorkshire and it is a real privilege to be part of it. There is a good vibe around the place and you do get a sense we are progressing nicely."

Williamson's deal follows that of the Australian internationals Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell - who have been identified primarily for the NatWest Blast, although Finch will also double up in the Championship before he joins Australia's squad for the ODI series against England - and Pakistan's top-order batsman Younis Khan, whose major priority will be early season Championship games when Yorkshire anticipate losing several batsmen to England's tour of the West Indies.

If their England contingent can come and go into the dressing room and the culture can survive, so Yorkshire calculate can overseas players as long as they buy into what the county is trying to achieve.

"It is satisfying that we now have full coverage of world-class overseas players for the forthcoming season," Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire's director of cricket, said. "Re-signing Kane at the back end of the campaign is the final jigsaw in the piece." Perhaps that explains why Moxon never had much success at jigsaws.