South African batsman Jacques Rudolph joined up with his new Yorkshire team-mates at Headingley Carnegie yesterday and Pakistani star Younis Khan will arrive tomorrow after a late scare about his availability.

The Pakistan Cricket Board are reported to have barred two of their players from joining county clubs but Younis assured Yorkshire chief executive Stewart Regan in a telephone call yesterday afternoon, that he has been given permission to join Yorkshire.

Younis later said: "I am aware that the PCB have expressed concerns about the fitness levels of some of our players and are unhappy about their involvement in county cricket. However, I have played a lot of domestic cricket in Pakistan and am very fit and will definitely be playing for Yorkshire next week."

Younis also confirmed that though Pakistan are to play three one-day internationals against Sri Lanka in Abu Dhabi in early May he did not expect to be involved in them.

There is no doubting Rudolph's availability for the full season and asked whether his future plans at international level would be with South Africa or England, the Kolpak signing told The Press in an exclusive interview: "I just want to concentrate on playing the best cricket I can for Yorkshire over the next three years.

"Hopefully, I will do well enough over that period to be offered an extension to my contract.

"I don't want to look too far into the future as far as Test cricket is concerned. I am looking forward to three years of playing to the best of my ability for Yorkshire and I will make other decisions later on."

Rudolph (pictured) said he had always wanted the opportunity to play county cricket and it was a great privilege to become involved with Yorkshire.

"This is a very exciting time for me personally and I am really looking forward to the start of the season next week," he said.

"I am feeling pretty confident because my batting form has been above average over the past season for Free State Eagles. Now I just need to adapt to adapt to English conditions.

"I have been looking at Yorkshire's fixture-list and I can see the season is jam-packed but this will give me the opportunity to get my momentum going."

Rudolph was present with his team-mates yesterday at the club's start-of-season lunch.

Immediately after, there was a session of training and net practices before the team left for Durham ahead of today's one-day friendly at Riverside.

Matthew Hoggard, Tim Bresnan and Adil Rashid were all unavailable for Yorkshire today because they are playing for MCC against county champions Sussex at Lord's in the season's first-class opener.

Yorkshire (v Durham) from: White, Rudolph, Gale, McGrath, Pyrah, Shahzad, Brophy, Gough, Gilbert, Lawson, Wainwright, Patterson.