and thus the number of English players eligible to represent England and playing regular County Cricket is going down. And associated with this a slide in England's Test performances....
That's a good point.
Could always sign for Division One side if they were any good.
Yeah they could, but Division 1 doesn't have the best 100 players and division 2 the next 100.
Personally i reckon having the best players in just nine sides will help improve the depth in England. But the problem comes when you have sides in different divisions in both forms. There are more players moving to Division One clubs, but really the gap between both divisions seems fairly small.
The obvious answer to your question is, yes there are. The problem is what can we do about it? The sad answer is, not a lot. Following the Kolpak ruling & with EU freedom of movement any South African or any non-Brit who qualifies for an EU passport can ply there trade over here as a non-overseas player.The Big Question IMHO is are there Too Many Overseas Players in County Cricket ?
I draw parallels to the past when they had loads of Overseas players and the England Teams performances dropped. Then they went down to 1 player only per county for a long time and they seemed to come right to the point of winning back the Ashes and reaching No.2 ranking - but now they have lots of overseas players and others who are playing as locals under EU passports and under other eligibility criteria "pretending" as locals
I think there is a message there for administrators of English Cricket.
The EU have created this mess, they're the only ones who can sort it out. (And no, I'm no a Eurosceptic)
Exactly, it's utterly ludicrous. No way IMO should there be a First-Class divide between First Division and Second Division County Championship games, there's really not a massive divide. But in SA, there is between Franchise and Provincial cricket, which is not recognised.
Hamish Marshall - NZ State Championship
Strongly disagree. There isn't the depth of English players to have a strong competition consisting of 16 counties. I know a competition of fourth or fifth rate English players who're worth nothing sounds more enticing to some people than what decent players we produce facing second rate foreigners earning more than they're worth, but I know what I'd prefer to watch/have our best young players gain experience in.
There's a balance to be struck tho. I've no issue with top notch foreign stars coming over & playing as legitimate overseas pros nor with guys like Trott or KP who come over at a sufficiently young age to be able to qualify for England. It's the ageing saffies who've come over to line their pockets (& good luck to them, btw, it's our problem not their's) who could be holding back young prospects I really have the problem with. There's very rarely a pretence at qualifying to play for us & (as with Harris) they can quickly revert back to being bona fide yarpies should international recognition come their way.
).
I don't see why, TBH. Sport is a very, very different form of employment to pretty much anything else IMO. Sport's principal purpose is not employment - people play sport as a pastime, and non-players view it as a spectacle. Both of these are true of virtually no other form of employment. And there was a time (200 years ago or so) when no-one played sport professionally, and Gideon Haigh once said in a very salient choice of phrasemaking: "introducing money into a sporting ecosystem cannot help but strain the bond between spectator and spectacle".
Since two players from the football team I support got convicted of "brech of the peace" for their on field behaviour (and TBH anyone who thinks there is a peace to breach at Rangers v Celtic games is a bit silly
) I've always thought the law should apply to sport as that was the argument of the police who brought the case. For criminal law, read employment law. In any case its probably the average players that get pushed out and that's no bad thing. I do think overseas players get scapegoated sometimes. Take Lancashire. Young players like Smith, Nweby, Hogg (who has had to go on loan twice to get games) and Cross don't get much action because of Cork, Chapple, Sutton plus Anderson and Mahmood when England don't want the later two. They don't get much critcisim for this. Now if it had been Kolpaks keeping them out...