Ajmal Shahzad has pointed to fitness as one of the reasons why he struggled for Yorkshire in 2011.

The former Windhill fast bowler had a summer to forget, only taking 25 County Championship wickets and falling out of the England Test and one-day international reckoning.

Shahzad has suffered from two torn hamstrings and an ankle problem since the start of the year, restricting him to ten four-day matches for his county.

But, having been recently called up to the elite group of England Performance Programme players for a busy winter’s training schedule, the 26-year-old is determined to put those disappointments behind him.

He is also confident of proving why the national selectors picked him to play international cricket in the first place.

He said: “I’m delighted that they’ve shown faith in me, and the Performance Programme will be a great opportunity.

“I’ve been at the top of the ladder, so I know what it will take to get back there. I’m not a million miles away.

“As soon as I’m back performing at 100 per cent fitness, I should be back in with a chance.

“It’s been a tough season for me. I’ve played through a few injuries when I may have been better taking some time off to let them settle but I wanted to help the boys out because we were in a tough situation.”

Shahzad was a non-playing member of England’s Ashes winning squad last winter but has only played seven one-day internationals since.

“I’ve been playing cricket for virtually three years non-stop, and the majority of it has gone very well,” he said. “It’s been an uphill curve but this summer has been a slight blip.”

Alongside Adil Rashid, Shahzad was named by chairman Colin Graves as somebody who needed to improve their form ahead of 2012. Graves even said that Shahzad had apologised to him for his performances.

But Shahzad clarified that: “It wasn’t really an apology, it was a kind of ‘I admit that I didn’t have the best of seasons’.

“Colin has put a lot of time and money into Yorkshire. What he was hoping to get from me this year, I didn’t deliver it. However, when he maybe didn’t expect a lot from me in previous years, I delivered as much as anybody else.”