MARTYN Moxon says Yorkshire will continue to delve into the minefield that surrounds trying to bring the world's best talent to Headingley as the club's overseas players.

The county have been frustrated on numerous occasions in recent years with unforeseen availability problems surrounding their recruits.

Last year, New Zealand captain Kane Williamson pulled out of a County Championship game against Surrey due to fatigue following an arduous schedule of international cricket and at the IPL.

This year, Travis Head was signed as their T20 specialist overseas player before having to pull out due to Australia A commitments.

Another example which completely blindsided Yorkshire came only this month when Pakistan captain Sarfraz Ahmed was signed for the final five T20 Blast group games and the knockout stages.

Mid-stay, he was then told by the Pakistan Cricket Board that he had to return home for a training camp ahead of the knockout stages.

In the end, it did not matter as Yorkshire missed out on a place in the quarter-finals. But it was further proof that recruiting overseas players is becoming increasingly problematic.

"Each year, you have to weigh up the pros and cons," said Yorkshire director of cricket Moxon.

"You take players on in good faith. If you're told a player is available for a period of time, you have to take it that's what it's going to be.

"When we bring players in, we want them to be better than the ones we've got. That's important. We don't just want to bring players in for the sake of it.

"They need to be markedly better and that's our general rule. But when that's the case, there's always a risk they're going to get called back for something like a new tour being arranged at short notice.

"We want to try and bring on our own players as much as possible but it's good if you can have top international cricketers around them because your own players learn from them. That's the ideal.

"But getting top international cricketers for any length of time is becoming increasingly difficult.

"I think, realistically, we will look to continue signing top overseas players and hope that when we sign them we get them for the period stipulated."

Peter Handscomb left Headingley at the end of July to tour Bangladesh with Australia's Test team but that was different as Yorkshire always knew it was likely to be the case when they signed him in December.

Some counties have gone down the route of signing overseas players who are either retired from international cricket or just outside of that set-up.

Glamorgan and Leicestershire have former Yorkshire duo Clint McKay and Jacques Rudolph respectively this season, while Northamptonshire have Rory Kleinveldt and Ryan McLaren is at Lancashire.

But even those kind of players are not immune from problems. Last year, Jake Lehmann had to miss Yorkshire's final, and title-deciding, Championship match of the season against Middlesex at Lord's, having been recalled by South Australia to resume state commitments.

It would be no surprise to see the same happen this year to Shaun Marsh, given Western Australia's first one-day cup match of their summer takes place on September 29, the day after Yorkshire finish the season against Essex at Chelmsford.