28 November 2007

More Kolpak irritation

So Vaughn van Jaarsveld has turned his back on Warwickshire and decided after all that he wants to be South African rather than English. The natural instinct is to criticise him for a self-serving attitude or to criticise his county for getting themselves into this situation.

But it seems to me that both sides deserve some sympathy in that the player has only got one short career to make the most of and you can see from the press releases from Gilo and Cricket Burble's old friend Colin Povey (the county's chief executive used to score runs for Whitchurch until we learnt he didn't like the old f&g).

The problem is that the legal system doesn't allow cricket to control itself so there is no alternative to a voluntary code of conduct. How about a minimum of say 7 England qualified players in each team with financial penalties if the code is contravened?

1 comment:

Ed said...

I'm nervous about any system that stops the best players playing, irrelevant of where they come from - I don't agree that it impacts on the national team - quite the opposite. The more we dumb down county cricket to ensure we get Englishmen into the teams, the less well prepared our players will be for Test cricket.

I did completely agree with a point you made a while ago though - overseas players (of any variety) should sign up for a minimum amount of time, to stop guys playing 4 games and then leaving again.