Is the lack of Kolpak and County Incentives harming England?
Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 3:58 pmIn the late 90's I went to Northampton to watch Sussex play a one day game. That day Northants, on a dry end of summer pitch that was taking turn, fielded three spinners in their squad, all relative novices in a team that was lead by Matthew Hayden, an established legend of the game waiting to happen, and with two international seamers in their ranks. I had heard of Graham Swann before having read an article about him/Sales and Loye's potential at Northants, but had never heard of Jason Brown or Michael Davies. All three bowled very well as Northants restricted Sussex to a narrow total.... for a country struggling to find a spinner, it seemed like the future might be a little brighter.
Within 24 months Swann had bowled 5 overs in a ODI never to return for nearly 10 years, the press were criticising the selectors for picking Salisbury over Brown after a year in 2000 inside which he took 70 wickets at 20 in a championship season and toured Sri Lanka with the A team, relegating Davies to be released to Essex despite his generally impressive returns( Davies retired after amazingly being released by Essex the following year, taking 100 CC wickets @ 25!!! In a career which also saw him picked for the A Team around the same time).... in the middle of it all a young 18 year old lad from Bedford, one Monty Panesar, emerged on debut taking 4-11 for Northants.
In the space of three years Northants produced the best spinner England would have in decades, possibly the second best spinner inside that time, and two A team players that were very close to breaking the test team (Brown was only held up by a disastrous 2001 season when Northants were penalised for producing wicket taking wickets, and all bowlers toiled on the deadest of dead tracks).
This may be a very defined and extreme case, but this is also a very good example of the power of competition in the development of players. Swann was made to wait both at county level, and always had other aspiring players behind him. And while he was forced to wait, his performances stepping up to test cricket were almost seamless.
It is a growing concern for the English game that so few players since 2009 have come through, and while in other postings I have explained that my belief is that this has been caused by a new regime and a hyper inflated system, a recent article by Dobell (posted by HFTB) does at least draw me to something that is largely forgotten... that in 2009 the new rules to Kolpak came into force, and that the results could have also have a majorly negative impact on the county game!
Kolpak was always a dirty word from the start in the press; in 2004 the county system drew united breath at the impacts the influx of uncapped foreign talents could have on the game. The worry was that, with mercenaries flooding teams, there would be little left for English talent in terms of development chances. I am very dubious to have seen this occur in reality; while it is obvious that more non-English qualified talent got opportunities, surely the barriers were not an issue to those of true quality?
One of the most maligned of Kolpak signings has to go down as Jacques Rudolph, a man who’s presence after he signalled his intention to step away from South Africa to a pursue a career in England raised more than a few eyebrows. Rudolph was the epitome of the Saffer mercenary, turning his back on a failing international career with hopes to start again and potentially qualify for England. Rudolph’s presence at Yorkshire may have been controversial, but certainly didn’t stop a new generation of Yorkshire batsman come into the team. Root, Bairstow, Lyth and Balance have all come through in the time Rudolph was playing at Yorkshire, arguably also having benefitted from playing alongside an amazing county batsman and experienced test cap like Rudolph. His 5,500 runs @ 53 provided not only a marker to youngsters on what to aspire to, it also provided a level of standard across the competition that improved the game.
Yorkshire have an obvious history of producing talent, however, so the very presence of quality emerging here may not be a good yard stick for cricket in general. It is quite amusing to note though that, at the start of the 2011 when the county financial incentive system kicked in, they were hailed as having fielded an all-England born XI team by the Daily Mail under the banner “British is Best” in accordance with the press support for the golden new rules kicking in! They were relegated, and by the end of the year Ballance, Rudolph and the Saffer Brophy were 3 of their top 4 run averagers.
The ECB’s financial incentives for fielding home grown players had been passed in 2010 along with the stricter work permit rules all but put an end to Kolpak’s, increased further with the heightened international calendar meaning few capped players were available. The rules made the ECB able to penalise counties up to near 50% of their funding based on how many younger English guys played in the team. Many teams, like Derbyshire, were vocal that the rule meant they simply had to pick young English talent for financial survival, regardless of the competitive cost…. Derbyshire have only had one English born player average over 40 since 2009(who averaged 27 in his career), with their most consistent player a South African signed to an “entrepreneurial visa” on a clever technicality that has since been covered by the ECB and technically should not have been playing. So much for English under 26 talent coming to the fore. Even Chesney Hughes, who had a fine year 2010 when switching to the English county game, has seemingly digressed with the dearth of talent he is surrounded by.
Other notable counties like Leicestershire have also had to replace very competent county players with absolute filth. Joshua Cobb( 63 matches – average 23 with bat), Greg Smith (65 matches – 25 with bat), Alex Wyatt (53 wickets @36), James Sykes ( average 13 with bat/61 with ball), Nathan Buck (108 wickets @ 40.52), Robert Taylor (16 matches aver 20 with bat/45 with ball) are the sum of all the under 25 home grown players they have still in the team, an absolute atrocity in quality… the only under 26 worth keeping signed from the Unicorns in Nathan Eckersley… in Kolpak years they produced James Taylor and Stuart Broad. Its maybe understandable why Taylor in particular thought he needed to leave to further his career.
I think it is undeniable that the standards of county cricket continue to drop lower as time goes by. The problem is further compounded by the National teams sifting through players to sit in ODI or test squads and protecting their assets from playing all the time. Even at the top of the county championship as the deciding games came into play, some matches had as much as 6 players removed, either on England Lions/ODI/Test duty or playing for Ireland or Scotland. It made the end of the Championship farcical, and destroyed what should have been a fiercely competitive ending to the season.
If our English players are not being tested at county level then they are going to continue to feel the step up to test cricket too greatly. The ECB estimated that 53 new English players were given cricket under their Kolpak reshuffle, but if these players are only serving as average boosters for other players, or are being picked simply for money and not on merit, then having them in the system is not only useless, but hugely damaging for the whole system. If one English player was playing in a side of XI established county pro’s, arguably you are producing a much better player than someone destroying featherbed attacks of 20 year old trailists around for fun. We need intensity and fight in our county system, at the moment our players simply aren’t making the grade stepping up.
Within 24 months Swann had bowled 5 overs in a ODI never to return for nearly 10 years, the press were criticising the selectors for picking Salisbury over Brown after a year in 2000 inside which he took 70 wickets at 20 in a championship season and toured Sri Lanka with the A team, relegating Davies to be released to Essex despite his generally impressive returns( Davies retired after amazingly being released by Essex the following year, taking 100 CC wickets @ 25!!! In a career which also saw him picked for the A Team around the same time).... in the middle of it all a young 18 year old lad from Bedford, one Monty Panesar, emerged on debut taking 4-11 for Northants.
In the space of three years Northants produced the best spinner England would have in decades, possibly the second best spinner inside that time, and two A team players that were very close to breaking the test team (Brown was only held up by a disastrous 2001 season when Northants were penalised for producing wicket taking wickets, and all bowlers toiled on the deadest of dead tracks).
This may be a very defined and extreme case, but this is also a very good example of the power of competition in the development of players. Swann was made to wait both at county level, and always had other aspiring players behind him. And while he was forced to wait, his performances stepping up to test cricket were almost seamless.
It is a growing concern for the English game that so few players since 2009 have come through, and while in other postings I have explained that my belief is that this has been caused by a new regime and a hyper inflated system, a recent article by Dobell (posted by HFTB) does at least draw me to something that is largely forgotten... that in 2009 the new rules to Kolpak came into force, and that the results could have also have a majorly negative impact on the county game!
Kolpak was always a dirty word from the start in the press; in 2004 the county system drew united breath at the impacts the influx of uncapped foreign talents could have on the game. The worry was that, with mercenaries flooding teams, there would be little left for English talent in terms of development chances. I am very dubious to have seen this occur in reality; while it is obvious that more non-English qualified talent got opportunities, surely the barriers were not an issue to those of true quality?
One of the most maligned of Kolpak signings has to go down as Jacques Rudolph, a man who’s presence after he signalled his intention to step away from South Africa to a pursue a career in England raised more than a few eyebrows. Rudolph was the epitome of the Saffer mercenary, turning his back on a failing international career with hopes to start again and potentially qualify for England. Rudolph’s presence at Yorkshire may have been controversial, but certainly didn’t stop a new generation of Yorkshire batsman come into the team. Root, Bairstow, Lyth and Balance have all come through in the time Rudolph was playing at Yorkshire, arguably also having benefitted from playing alongside an amazing county batsman and experienced test cap like Rudolph. His 5,500 runs @ 53 provided not only a marker to youngsters on what to aspire to, it also provided a level of standard across the competition that improved the game.
Yorkshire have an obvious history of producing talent, however, so the very presence of quality emerging here may not be a good yard stick for cricket in general. It is quite amusing to note though that, at the start of the 2011 when the county financial incentive system kicked in, they were hailed as having fielded an all-England born XI team by the Daily Mail under the banner “British is Best” in accordance with the press support for the golden new rules kicking in! They were relegated, and by the end of the year Ballance, Rudolph and the Saffer Brophy were 3 of their top 4 run averagers.
The ECB’s financial incentives for fielding home grown players had been passed in 2010 along with the stricter work permit rules all but put an end to Kolpak’s, increased further with the heightened international calendar meaning few capped players were available. The rules made the ECB able to penalise counties up to near 50% of their funding based on how many younger English guys played in the team. Many teams, like Derbyshire, were vocal that the rule meant they simply had to pick young English talent for financial survival, regardless of the competitive cost…. Derbyshire have only had one English born player average over 40 since 2009(who averaged 27 in his career), with their most consistent player a South African signed to an “entrepreneurial visa” on a clever technicality that has since been covered by the ECB and technically should not have been playing. So much for English under 26 talent coming to the fore. Even Chesney Hughes, who had a fine year 2010 when switching to the English county game, has seemingly digressed with the dearth of talent he is surrounded by.
Other notable counties like Leicestershire have also had to replace very competent county players with absolute filth. Joshua Cobb( 63 matches – average 23 with bat), Greg Smith (65 matches – 25 with bat), Alex Wyatt (53 wickets @36), James Sykes ( average 13 with bat/61 with ball), Nathan Buck (108 wickets @ 40.52), Robert Taylor (16 matches aver 20 with bat/45 with ball) are the sum of all the under 25 home grown players they have still in the team, an absolute atrocity in quality… the only under 26 worth keeping signed from the Unicorns in Nathan Eckersley… in Kolpak years they produced James Taylor and Stuart Broad. Its maybe understandable why Taylor in particular thought he needed to leave to further his career.
I think it is undeniable that the standards of county cricket continue to drop lower as time goes by. The problem is further compounded by the National teams sifting through players to sit in ODI or test squads and protecting their assets from playing all the time. Even at the top of the county championship as the deciding games came into play, some matches had as much as 6 players removed, either on England Lions/ODI/Test duty or playing for Ireland or Scotland. It made the end of the Championship farcical, and destroyed what should have been a fiercely competitive ending to the season.
If our English players are not being tested at county level then they are going to continue to feel the step up to test cricket too greatly. The ECB estimated that 53 new English players were given cricket under their Kolpak reshuffle, but if these players are only serving as average boosters for other players, or are being picked simply for money and not on merit, then having them in the system is not only useless, but hugely damaging for the whole system. If one English player was playing in a side of XI established county pro’s, arguably you are producing a much better player than someone destroying featherbed attacks of 20 year old trailists around for fun. We need intensity and fight in our county system, at the moment our players simply aren’t making the grade stepping up.