Yorkshire’s Adil Rashid believes he is the type of player who needs to play as much cricket as possible in order to build up his confidence.

The young leg-spinner is back in pre-season training with his county colleagues – less than a week after arriving back from a frustrating tour of South Africa with the full England squad.

Bradford-born Rashid only bowled one competitive over on the whole tour, which went for 25 during a Twenty20 international at Centurion in mid-November.

For the rest of the trip he was consigned to 12th man duties and was subsequently omitted from the forthcoming tour of Bangladesh.

It was a surprising omission as he has been on tough tours of the West Indies and South Africa in the past year, yet failed to be selected for the easiest trip on the international calendar in a spinner’s paradise.

Yet the 21-year-old bowler insisted: “I wasn’t too disappointed (to be left out). I knew that if I didn’t go to Bangladesh I would be able to go to Abu Dhabi (with the England Lions) and then Barbados with Yorkshire to play some games.

“Personally, the more I bowl the more confident I get. I didn’t get that opportunity in South Africa, so hopefully in this pre-season and (county) season I’ll get to bowl more.”

Selected as a back-up to Graeme Swann for the recent tour, he slipped down the pecking order to fall behind Kent off-spinner James Tredwell – a man who was only called up as injury cover.

Rashid was also the subject of some negative comments from South Africa coach Mickey Arthur, who suggested that England had not shown the youngster enough faith. They seemed wide of the mark at the time but now look to have struck a chord.

Yorkshire director of professional cricket Martyn Moxon has also expressed his concerns over the player’s handling in the last week.

Rashid said: “It was very frustrating but it would have been frustrating for anyone. It can be part and parcel of being an England cricketer. It’s behind me now and I’m looking to the future.”

It now seems certain that, following next month’s England Lions tour to the United Arab Emirates, Yorkshire will have their starlet available for the vast majority of the English summer.

Yorkshire chief executive Stewart Regan said: “I think Martyn’s been in discussions with the ECB. I don’t think anyone can give you an absolute, nailed-down guarantee that you are going to have him for X period of time.

“It all depends on how he performs. If he hits the ground running and has a fantastic first quarter of the season, who knows what they might do?

“We’ve been disappointed at how Adil’s been handled. We don’t think he’s had enough opportunities to bowl.

“I suppose from the ECB’s perspective it’s about trying to get a balance between exposing him to being part of an international set-up and getting first-team cricket. Certainly, having exposed him to that, I feel he’s gone backwards in some ways over the last few months.

“He’ll need to come back here and start working with the Yorkshire squad to discover some of the form we saw from him at the end of last season, when he was taking five wickets and scoring 100 runs.”

Rashid, meanwhile, believes he is always developing, whether that be with Yorkshire, England Lions or the full England squad.

He said: “I always learn something new about myself and hopefully I can keep doing that. I’m only 21 and I’ve got a lot of learning to do. A spinner hits his peak at the age of 29 or 30.

“It would be nice to play a full season of Championship, Twenty20s and one-dayers here. Hopefully that will happen.”