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Here’s a scary thought for you. What if there ARE no promising 17 year olds in the system?
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ECB moves to curtail non-English influx
By Will 4 years ago, mid-April Leave a comment on this post
In the past 5 years, a slow trickle of foreign players have made use of a European ruling known as Kolpak to play county cricket - none of them eligible to play for the English national game. At last, Lord’s appears to have cottoned onto this and next month are expected to announce performance-related pay scheme. The figures, in this Mirror article, are startling:
This summer, no fewer than 70 first-class county cricketers will NOT be eligible to play for England - around 20 per cent of the combined playing staffs.
I hadn’t realised it had reached 20% - that’s absolutely disgraceful. Soon though, counties like Notts (who have 7 players who are NOT eligible to play for England) won’t receive their payout from Lord’s and will possibly face bankruptcy, unless they start picking English and Welsh players.
My main problem is obvious: they’re not using young, English talent. I don’t fully understand why, either, because it must be cheaper for counties to sign a promising 17 year-old than a 28 year-old foreigner. That 17 year old prospect could eventually become a national star, which would then drive back revenue to the club and so on. So - great news.
Update: better article at The Telegraph
Tags: county-cricket, england, kolpak |
3 Responses to “ECB moves to curtail non-English influx”
April 10th, 2005 at 3.03 am
April 10th, 2005 at 4.05 pm
Arguably, on this evidence, maybe there aren’t any. Football is so many miles ahead in terms of popularity and accessibility for young people nowadays, Cricket really does struggle to keep up. But I’m still hopeful. There are some bloody good cricketers at the academy, so the kolpak-krowd are just suffocating home-grown talent.
April 11th, 2005 at 2.37 am
If a kid is good enough and hungry enough, he’ll come through. Chelsea don’t see it as their job to employ the best English footballer, they just see it as their job to buy the best footballers. John Terry and Frank Lampard are doing okay because of it. The problem is that International cricket is the be-all and end-all of cricket, and it causes these distortions in the county system.
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