After an improved season on the field for Derbyshire, one that ended with success for the club Academy, comes more good news with the club harvesting a top marketing award off it.
It is a deserved reward for continued excellent work by a small team that has played a significant role in turning around the financial fortunes of the club. They are to be warmly congratulated on their work and I look forward to seeing more enterprising initiatives in 2012.
Back on the pitch, I don't think I can recall a close-season with less players being released. A few have come to the end of contracts and opted to move on, like Martin van Jaarsveld and Joe Denly at Kent and Greg Smith at Derbyshire, but last year saw a sizeable clearout of older players around the game and this year has seen a few more.
The latest casualty of the ECB age-related payments would appear to be Chris Schofield at Surrey. He has had a decent career, illustrated by 237 wickets at 36 and a batting average of around 30. Yet the likelihood of another deal on the county circuit would appear remote, as happened last year with his erstwhile team mate Usman Afzaal. Such players a few years back would have moved to another county with no problem and considerable competition, but it is increasingly becoming a young man's game. The rights and wrongs of that are well-documented and the merits of the time-served professional are evident in such players as Darren Stevens and Wes Durston.
Durston averaged 30 by the time he reached 26 years of age, but now boasts a first-class average of 37 after successive first-class season averages, albeit sometimes with minimal opportunity, of 46, 57, 54, 22 and 41 since he passed that landmark cricketing birthday. Meanwhile at the age of 26, Stevens averaged a shade under 20 with the bat and had only two wickets with the ball. This has now increased to 34 and he has become one of the most underrated all-rounders in the county game, last season taking 41 wickets at 21, as well as proving one of the best players in T20.
Such players can be seen around the county circuit and there is a temptation to say "what if?" with regard to plenty of others around the counties who may have been prematurely released. The game, especially in its history, is full of late developers, David Steele of Northamptonshire and Derbyshire being a classic example. So too was Graeme Welch, who at 26 had 150 wickets in six summers at an average nearer forty than thirty. Few may have seen him as a genuine talent who would go on to take over 250 wickets in five season for Derbyshire.
What the regulations have done, of course, is put paid to a number of players, and there were plenty over the years, who appeared to coast through seasons, doing just enough, especially in the later season, to get their contract extended. Competition for places on county staffs is now fierce and while the rewards for the successful are greater, opportunities for the late developers are harder to come by and require unprecedented levels of consistency to be maintained.
In closing today, I'm pleased to mention a sparkling century by Usman Khawaja for New South Wales today in a 50-over match against South Australia. He and Phil Hughes (96) put on 212 for the first wicket as his team amassed 261-3, Khawaja making 116 from 137 balls. As I close, however, they look like losing, with their opponents 163-3 needing 99 in 16 overs after good knocks by Michael Klinger and Callum Ferguson.
See you soon.
khawaja and hughes both should have scored quicker. Test match batsman both opening in one day dont compliment each other. Should have got 300+
ReplyDeleteFair comment and both of course are vying for one place in the Aussie side. 260 isn't a bad score, but it depends on the track, outfield and boundary size. It wasn't enough today though!
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right in your observations regarding age related payments Peakfan,but i still think the idea is ill concieved and only partially thought out.
ReplyDeleteTo encourage and financially reward counties to produce home grown players is fine and i have nothing against that as a concept,but there are dangers ahead. We have gone from the extreme of Kolpak players to the other extreme of kids.
There has to be a role for older players within the game and i use the term older very loosly as we are talking about players of 26 plus. The obvious danger is to discourage people even considering a career in county cricket when,as seems likely in the future,those same players will be shown the door as soon as they are no longer of financial benefit to their county. It isn,t happening yet,at least not to a great extent,but that will surely be the logical outcome of this half baked scheme.
I have asked the question before. What happens to the likes of Whiteley,Borrington,Clare,Knight etc when they are 26?. If this ECB money is the only reason counties will continue to exist ,then the answer to my question is fairly obvious. Such as Knight may spend more time at university than in first class cricket.
We have already spoken about the situation Ben Thornley finds himself in and he is certainly not unique and won,t be in the future. Retrospective payments to "parent" counties for players they have been released seems as illogical as it is farcical. We may gain from this situation ourselves,but it hardly seems fair on the individual players concerned.
I believe the flaws in this ECB system will come to light in the not too distant future. To help the national team is one thing,to potentially ruin county cricket is something else. Like you said before,the ECB can spend it,s money however it sees fit,but unless some fundamental changes take place,cricket as a whole will suffer.