Quote:
Originally Posted by HeathDavisSpeed
It's not like England bought these players off the street, or stole them away from the safe clutches of South African sporting academies. Pietersen, Lumb and Morgan were developed, trained and raised by the English sporting system. Kieswetter is a bit different as he played for Yarpie U-19s, but I have no problem with Pietersen, Lumb, Morgan, Strauss or Prior.
Just sour grapes from other teams that keep bringing this up all the time.
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Not trying to imply that England are to blame for this but New Zealand have a lot of foreigners as well, this world cup just brought up how many players are from overseas in a pretty legitimate sense.
NZ have Watling, Elliott and a Wagner who won't be too far from playing. We've always had a few Aussie born players as well, like Styris and Sinclair. I'm just wondering where the ICC should draw the line in the sand between what country you play for.
Kieswetter played for South Africa's Western Province from 13-18 and represented them in the 06 U/19 WC.
Lumb played for junior teams in Transvaal and has since then played county cricket since 2000.
Pietersen played first class cricket in Natal for two seasons before first playing in England where he played in both countries for a while I think. He did play at least 4 years of cricket for English domestic teams before getting his cap.
Morgan played for Irish U-15,17 and 19s and soon got an Irish cap not long after. Playing English domestic cricket since 06 for Middlesex but having been a product of Irish cricket for a few years before this and a couple years after.
I reckon Pietersen and Lumb are pretty much non-issues but that Kieswetter and Morgan are open for far more scrutiny. The players themselves an the English team selection should come under no fire as they should both be looking to make the best team, I'm more concerned that with Morgan a highly promising player was taken from Ireland due to the ICC's relaxed rules on associates. Kieswetter is probably just a bit fresh in England for mine but possibly not an issue either.
It's just strange to see such a large amount of non-national born players. Then theres blokes like Nash who leave Australian cricket because they don't reckon they can get a cap.