| 
Posts and words
Loading ...
Foreign players in English cricket is a bit of a dicey issue. For one, England is the only place where it happens on such a large scale. As far as I know South Africa does allow foreign players (Amre and Kambli did play for sides there), Australia used to (Imran, Sobers etc.), New Zealand does (Mohammad Wasim of Pakistan played for a couple of seasons) but nowhere is it on the scale in English cricket.
After 1968 when the limit on the # of foreign players was raised, I think its fair to say English cricket did benefit. Throughout the 1970s and for the first half of the 1980s, the side was pretty good. Heck, they even beat Australia a few times! 
Most of the foreign players were West Indian and either through a coincidence or through actual exposure to great talent, English cricket also benefitted and improved. I think you must ensure that foreign players can play in county cricket, firstly because its the only place where there’s cricket during these months and secondly because in my opinion, having good players playing does tend to lift the performance of the other players.
I think the problem with several counties is that they pay young unestablished cricketers, especially Aussie ones, and that obviously causes heartburn. The amount they invested in that chap should have been used to improve local talent. Now that same chap, having become a better player with a couple of seasons in county cricket, will kick your butts four years later. Obviously the public wont like it.
Instead of having a limit on the number of foreign players, counties must be left free to choose the number they want. The new ECB plan obviously does provide them an incentive to produce national team players. So if they spent half their budget in bringing in overseas players, they’d be losing out bigtime. I’m fairly sure counties will be sane enough to realize that they’re better off getting one good overseas player and relying on the rest of the squad learning things from him rather than getting in three or four average foreign players.
