0Too many Overseas Players?

As I write this I am try­ing to find the right prose that doesn’t make me come across as some silly and nar­row minded ‘little Englander’ who sees all ‘them for­eign­ers’ as some­thing to be feared and hated.

World class over­seas play­ers such as Curtley and Court­ney and the Mas­ter Blaster Viv Richards have helped to light up the county cir­cuit in pre­vi­ous sea­sons and brought joy to mil­lions. All fans want to see the best qual­ity play­ers on show – myself included.

But I do want to have a little grumble about the extent of the abuse of the spir­it of the term ‘over­seas’ player.

At present counties are allowed one over­seas rep­res­ent­at­ive at any one time – so less than 10 per cent of the over­all makeup of the start­ing XI. It should be simple. But alas, life nev­er is…

Now the bound­ar­ies are becom­ing increas­ingly blurred. It star­ted of course with the surge in the num­ber of Kolpak play­ers (didn’t they make cam­er­as?!?) and now there appears to be yet more games afoot. When I had a quick glance at the county ins and outs for the com­ing sea­son I spot­ted two addi­tion­al cat­egor­ies to help counties cir­cum­nav­ig­ate the spir­it of the game.

EUP (EUPass­port) and UKP (recently obtained pass­port). I don’t yet know how this will mani­fest itself into the makeup of a team but I will be keep­ing a watch­ful eye on devel­op­ments, mark my words.

Frankly it’s laugh­able that play­ers who have rep­res­en­ted, at seni­or inter­na­tion­al level, the coun­try of their birth can some­how escape being classed as an over­seas play­er. I must stress no crick­et­ing or crim­in­al laws are being broken but crick­et is a sport of a high­er stand­ing. A more noble game if you will – that’s part of its appeal – and any­thing that dimin­ishes the spir­it of such a mag­ni­fi­cent game is to be rejected.

Filling a team with play­ers who are over­seas in everything but name reduces the oppor­tun­ity for home grown young­sters to be able to play for England.
The test can be simple – out of the XI – all but one (and all if a county chooses not to go for an over­seas play­er) should qual­i­fy to play for Eng­land. They must not have already rep­res­en­ted anoth­er nation oth­er than argu­ably at youth level.

I have a grow­ing con­cern that clubs are look­ing to fill their side with as many ‘over­seas’ play­ers as pos­sible – out of a mis­guided pre­sump­tion that such play­ers are, by vir­tue, bet­ter than home grown talent.

I expect com­ment on here from people bemoan­ing the cur­rent Eng­land XI – but that’s for anoth­er day…