In Dreams...

Thanks for your comments to last night’s piece on the overseas player for 2011. I’d have to say though that there’s more chance of me getting the role than Hashim Amla or AB de Villiers.


Why? Because both are way out of our league financially and de Villiers is scheduled to have elbow surgery after the World Cup, according to reports. Both are also likely to be involved in IPL and such players simply don’t need county cricket. The rewards from a county contract in comparison are almost laughable. If you can make £400,000 or more for a month in India, why would you consider six months in England for (my guess) £70,000? I enjoy my job, but if someone offered to pay me more money for working one month a year I’d be a blur on the way out of the building…

Ask yourself this – IF ( that’s a big if) a big name player could be paid enough to make it worth his while, what would he need to do to justify the expense? Given what Chris Rogers achieved on what we paid him, I would suggest a batsman would HAVE to score a minimum 1750 Championship runs – plus at least 1,000 in one-day games. In addition, anything short of a trophy would be failure.

Derbyshire simply don’t have the money and for that matter few counties do. The ones with a wealthy benefactor might persuade a big name to make a cameo appearance in the T20, but I have reservations about this sort of thing. What happens if that benefactor loses interest – or dies, as sadly happened to Matthew Harding at Chelsea a few years back? Cricket’s finances are currently on a knife edge, something that Derbyshire’s have been on for most of their existence.

A read through John Shawcroft’s masterpiece of a club history will tell you how many times the club has diced with financial disaster. Will Taylor’s prudence kept us afloat for years between and after the wars, but several times only the generosity of individual benefactors kept us solvent. Comparatively speaking we are much better off today, but John Morris still has the lowest budget for players in the country and there is no escaping that fact.

Another player who could come under the microscope might be Aussie Nathan Hauritz. He’s a good cricketer – an experienced bowler who can bowl with control in all forms of the game, and an ever-improving batsman. Centuries in his last two innings for New South Wales have cemented his claims as an all-rounder and I still can’t see how Steve Smith and Xavier Doherty are deemed better spinners. He had an excellent season as a professional in the Lancashire League a few years back and would do a solid job. Then again, he could force his way back into the Test side in between times...

Much would depend on Jake Needham’s confidence when he returns from South Africa, but if the greater need of the team is a steady, experienced spinner over a batsman, Hauritz looks the best that is currently available. I wouldn't expect him to run through teams like Muralitharan used to, but I could see him scoring 600 runs and taking 30-40 wickets
.
Christmas is coming and I’d quite like a top of the range Mercedes - but I’m quite happy with my second-hand Toyota Avensis that does a similar job at a price I can afford. John Morris will be looking around the world game, making numerous calls and seeing who might be available to do the same for Derbyshire.

He'll sort it. No worries on that score.