Jason Gillespie says Azeem Rafiq will have to hit the ground running upon his return to fitness following a knee injury if he is to regain his place in Yorkshire's County Championship team.

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

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

His two hundreds - a career best 180 and 110 not out came in successive innings against Somerset at Headingley and Warwickshire at Edgbaston earlier this month.

Rafiq is approximately three weeks away from playing again, and he will step up his comeback by travelling to Scarborough next week to train and be around the Yorkshire squad for their game 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 opposition teams that way."

While watching the rain fall at Taunton yesterday, where the first day of Yorkshire's fifth Championship match of the season against Somerset was washed out without as much as a ball bowled, Gillespie reiterated his delight at Rashid's return to form.

"Adil has been brilliant this year. He's been very consistent. The one thing that has stood out for us is off the field everything has been very consistent, his training and his preparation," said the Australian.

"We've been drumming that into him that we believe if you're consistent with all of that, it will flow into your cricket. That seems to have been proven correct so far."

Reading between the lines, it looks like Rafiq will have to be patient with regards to getting his chance again unless Yorkshire come across a dry and dusty pitch in the near future, something which seems unlikely given the miserable English weather.

Although England Performance Programme player Rafiq is more than handy with the bat, and has a Championship hundred to his name, Rashid has shown himself to be a proper batsman who gives the team excellent balance in the middle order.

"When we look at the composition of our side, we feel that playing four seamers is a good option for us with the spinner backing that up," added Gillespie. "A spinner is going to have to do something pretty special to demand selection and make us go away from that.

"When we've got all our fast bowlers fit and firing, it's a pretty intimidating attack. But having said that, if conditions do dictate that we could play three seamers with Adil and Azeem we will do it.

"The door is not closed by any stretch. But at this stage, the formula we've got is working very well."