Jason Gillespie knows he will face a tough selection decision when off-spinner Azeem Rafiq returns to full fitness following his right knee injury.

Rafiq took one wicket in the first LV= County Championship match of the season against Sussex in mid-April but his absence since has handed Adil Rashid the chance to shine with both bat and ball.

The leg-spinning all-rounder from Bradford has scored 401 runs from four matches, including two hundreds, and has taken nine wickets.

Rafiq is approximately three weeks away from fitness and will step up his comeback in Scarborough next week to train and be around the Yorkshire squad for their clash with Nottinghamshire.

“Azeem, to demand selection, is going to have to really perform,” said White Rose coach Gillespie.

“I was very consistent in the sense that I wanted to give Azeem first crack this year on the back of all the good work he did last year. His strike-rate was 50 balls per wicket last year, which for a finger spinner is outstanding.

“But Adil has come in, taken that opportunity and ran with it.

“If you’ve got a lad batting like that at six and bowling as well as he has, it does give us options. We can play four out and out quicks and really put pressure on teams that way.”

The first day of Yorkshire’s latest Championship match against Somerset at Taunton was washed out without a ball bowled today.