Moin Ashraf, above, and Gurman Randhawa, Yorkshire’s two newly contracted young players, have each received a grant of £1,000 from Yorkshire Players’ Association to pay for their share of the cost of the Club’s tour to Barbados from March 13 to 25.

The grants have been made on the recommendation of the association’s Discretionary Grant Fund Committee, and are the first of what it is hoped will be many more grants in the future.

Association chairman Bryan Stott said: “I am absolutely delighted that we have agreed to give financial assistance to these two outstanding young cricketers. I am certain that they will enjoy the tour and benefit from it enormously.”

Bradford-born Moin, 19, is an extremely promising young paceman who burst on the Championship scene late last summer by taking three crucial wickets in Yorkshire’s triumph at Trent Bridge in the last-but-one match, and then claiming 5-32, his side’s best bowling figures of the season, against Kent at Headingley Carnegie. In the two matches he captured nine wickets at 11.77.

Gurman, also 19, from Huddersfield, is a talented left-arm spin bowler who has won the YCCC Academy Player of the Year award for the past two years. As well as being a key player for the Academy in recent seasons, Gurman was easily Yorkshire’s most successful bowler in the Second XI Championship in 2010 with 32 wickets at 20.15 and a best performance of 6-98.

The association’s sixth annual general meeting will be held on Saturday, April 2, at 11am in the Conference Room of the indoor Cricket Centre after a visit by its members to Yorkshire’s new museum in Headingley Carnegie Cricket Ground. There will be time from 12.30pm for members of the Memorabilia Society to collect autographs before lunch is served.

The association’s summer reunion lunch takes place in the Taverners’ Suite of the Old Pavilion on Sunday, July 17, the day of Yorkshire’s Clydesdale Bank 40 League match against Middlesex. Members can meet from 11am.

DAVID WARNER