lol why isnt there a bigger hue and cry over this
everybody throws their toys out of the pram when a player skips on jamodis/jamt20s for a t20 franchise league but this is apparently fine????
Possible reasons:
●The county clubs told them they are reviewing contracts and those players know its 50/50 if they will be contracted or not in the future, so if that is your biggest source of income you obviously want to give yourself the best opportunity to keep that income by being available for games
●Have to remember these are associate cricketers which is nowhere near as secure as the big guns in terms of international playing time, salary etc
●Van Der Merwe is an old player, he might be trying to get as much money as possible for family before he retires. Maybe he feels if he shows commitment to his county club they can give him a role in the club after he retires.
●Colin Ackermann is also in his 30's, maybe he sees the situation back home in South Africa where government is trying to limit the amount of white south african players in their system thinking that if he is to continue with domestic cricket he has to be super secure in England cause there may be no going back.
●To build on the third point, Netherlands does not have a proper FC system or domestic set up, so even if they had to get test status it would leave a lot of their first team players in big trouble because they wouldn't be able to play County cricket and would have to be classed as overseas players which is heavily restricted same thing almost ruined Ireland cricket, so there's nothing to fall back on unlike most of the Test nations.
Associate players are making big sacrifices to be a part of tournaments unless there is stability we shouldn't critic them for trying to secure their futures.