Only vaguely mindful of the Twenty20 leviathan that is developing in India, where Shoaib Akhtar, Shaun Pollock and Jacob Oram were added yesterday to the hugely lucrative league that is starting in April with repercussions for the rest of world cricket, Surrey have signed Mohammad Asif as their overseas player for 2008. Arguably the best young fast bowler in the world, the 24-year-old Pakistani joins three other Test cricketers recruited by Surrey in the past month.

Although one of them is Usman Afzaal, the discarded England batsman, it is part of a wholesale revamping of the wealthiest club in the country. By further increasing the stock of overseas-bred county cricketers, it is also in tune with the worrying trend that the ECB seems unable to repel. Rikki Clarke and Rory Hamilton-Brown, the home-grown talents, are seeking fresh starts elsewhere - the latter in Sussex, Clarke probably as Derbyshire’s new captain.

Asif has been added to the recent signings of Saqlain Mushtaq and Pedro Collins, the Barbados and West Indies left-arm fast-medium bowler, who has joined a growing list of Kolpak entrants to the county game. Nic Pothas, Martin van Jaarsveld, Murray Goodwin and Jacques Rudolph are other prime examples. Saqlain will return to London on the strength of his British passport and Surrey are also hoping to sign Matt Nicholson, the Australian, who was their overseas fast bowler last season, as a Kolpak player. They are formidable bowlers, but not one of them will be available for England.

“In Mohammad, we have acquired one of the world’s best new-ball bowlers,” Alan Butcher, the Surrey cricket manager, said. He has taken 51 wickets at only 23 runs each in his 11 Tests, with five-wicket analyses against Sri Lanka and South Africa and four for 56 in the final Test against England at the Brit Oval last year. He played seven matches in 2006 for Leicestershire, who have signed Boeta Dippenaar, the South Africa Test batsman, as their overseas player next year.

Salaries even to the best-paid county cricketers may soon be dwarfed by the new Indian Premier League (IPL) run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as a counter to the rival television league. Yesterday, according to Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman and a vice-president of the BCCI, they added Shoaib, Pollock and Oram to a star-studded list that includes Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer, Mahela Jayawardena, Graeme Smith, Herschelle Gibbs, A. B. de Villiers, Ashwell Prince, Albie Mor-kel, Mohammad Yousuf, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Sanath Jayasuriya, Chaminda Vaas, Daniel Vettori, Stephen Fleming and Scott Styris.

The IPL, which is scheduled to start in April, will offer more than $3 million (about £1.47 million) in prize-money, in addition to signing-on fees for the commercial “franchise” teams that can only be guessed. It is no wonder that Warne is pondering his future at Hampshire. The first Twenty20 competition in India will feature eight franchises participating in 56 games that may offer an alternative market to county cricket for overseas players. The top four Indian franchise teams will contest semi-finals and the finalists will join the two leading Twenty20 teams from England, Australia and South Africa in the ICC-sanctioned Champions League next October for a first prize of $2 million.

Indian money proved stronger than British yesterday when Ric Charlesworth, the Australian, who had been offered the job as England’s high performance manager at Loughborough, resigned from his similar post in New Zealand to oversee the development of India’s hockey players.