Broadly speaking, I lost much of my interest in club football when the massively rich overseas investors started to get involved.
There was a time when local business men (which they were) took over as chairman of their local club and ran it. Some were richer than others, but broadly speaking it was a level playing field.
Now the inequalities are obvious. It is unlikely that we will see a lesser light win the FA Cup, while Leicester's winning of the Premiership may be the last of its kind, even if they had the backing of a pretty wealthy man themselves.
The same thing is happening in cricket.
Let me give you these names:
Now Tongue and Pennington.
Those are the seamers or seam bowling all rounders currently on the staff at Nottinghamshire, a list that doesn't include those between the academy (they do have one) and second eleven.
While accepting one of those is an England regular and another an overseas, how do you keep 12 players happy? Why do you need 12 similar bowlers? I know that injuries hit and I am sure that Nottinghamshire will pay well, but the gap between rich and poorer is ridiculous.
Derbyshire are a very well run county and have made profits for a number of years, but are unable to spend silly money.
We currently have Aitchison, Lakmal, Chappell, Conners and Potts as seam bowlers. The first two are injured, the third has been nursing an injury, the fourth is just coming back from one, the fifth is a youngster, not long out of the academy. There is also Scrimshaw, but a history of injury means he is largely saved for T20 cricket.
Nottinghamshire could point to that scenario and say that is why they need so many, but young players with any ambition at all, like Hayes, Pettman and Loten must look at the recent signings of Tongue and Pennington in dismay. Their chances of senior cricket look increasingly slim. Maybe in that situation you sit tight and see out your contract. Yet it cannot be a lot of fun to be playing second team cricket with little expectation of elevation to the senior side.
I really feel for Worcestershire. Losing those two to Nottinghamshire and, according to reports, Pat Brown to Derbyshire for next season is a massive hole to fill.
There is a similar situation at Lancashire. A huge staff of very talented cricketers, but some of them have very little chance of playing senior cricket on anything like a regular basis.
Something needs to be done. Whether that is a limit on the sizes of staff, transfer fees to be paid or compensation given to the clubs that did all of the development, the imbalance between rich and poor is very much to the detriment of the game.
How it is sorted is one for broader discussion, but it cannot be good for the future of our game to have the Test ground counties hoovering up the better players on the circuit. Quite often it is because those with international aspirations want to play division one cricket, as they see their chances limited by being in a second division side.
Yet how does a second division side look to get promoted, if their best players leave every season?
Fully agree , the whole landscape is biased towards the bigger clubs . There is an argument looking at said Notts squad is they are underachieving!!
ReplyDeleteIt is ridiculous that some clubs are able to have so many staff on their books and there should be a law in place to put a restriction on the number of players they can have. Notts, Lancs and Surrey are the worst offenders. As you say PF, the situation is getting just like the Premier League where the biggest clubs - Man City etc - buy the best players just to stop other clubs getting them.
ReplyDeleteSurrey signing Dan Lawrence. What on earth do they need him for?!
DeleteThe Notts signings even more baffling.
The old days of list a and b players wasn't great but it stopped this nonsense.
Essex Fan
I didn't understand that either. Good player, but Surrey have plenty of them and I can't figure that one from a player or club perspective. Aside from him, presumably getting paid a lot more money. But not necessarily furthering his career..
Deletetbf, most of the players on the Lancs (and Surrey) books are home-developed. In the case of my county (Lancs, for the record), it isn't always as much as an advantage is it appears to have all these young players coming through. For a start, Lancs have historically been a bit careless about developing their own talent. No county should have frittered away talents like Haseeb Hameed or Matt Parkinson in such a blasé way, to do it repeatedly - just look at the fates of players who have represented England whilst at Lancs in the last few years - is inexcusable. It is pretty fair to say that many fans are not at all happy about the way Parkinson was treated this season and if Lancs were not producing rafts of players they'd probably have been more careful about how he was treated (mind you, I'm looking at Adam Rossington, Josh Cobb and Billy Godleman as I think this; treating players poorly is not confined to the wealthy counties).
DeleteIt is pretty notable that in the last few seasons joining or playing for Lancs has not exactly proven a boost to anyone's international career (but a great way to put a stop to it!) and it's becoming clear that players with that kind of ambition are looking elsewhere. In the last few seasons the only successful (for us, it's not been a success for his Test ambitions) player we signed from another county who wasn't out of contract was Keaton Jennings; it's not exactly sharp practise from Lancs that Sussex had some kind of collective episode and released Luke Wells, or that Notts decided that Luke Wood would benefit from a series of loan spells in advance of his contract expiring thus signalling in letters 50 feet high that they weren't that bothered about keeping him. Oh, yes, I suppose there is Jos Buttler who the press and squad lists tell me is a Lancs player for all the good it has done us.
Lancs aren't doing what Notts and Surrey are doing and signing other team's best players. I don't doubt for a second we'd try but they won't come. We're a county whose best homegrown players leave. Liam Livingstone will be next; in fact, Tom Bailey's out of contract this season and we're perfectly capable of making a pig's ear of trying to keep him, but assuming he doesn't find himself at Warks or somewhere like that next season, Livingstone will be the next to leave.
I sometimes wonder if loan signings make smaller clubs partly complicit in aiding the bigger squads of the test counties. I know we get the benefit too and it’s sometimes a pre-signing look at a player, but would the players think twice of signing for a bigger club if there was a chance of no first class cricket for 2/3 years? I guess it depends on their motivation for playing. Craig
ReplyDeleteI think this situation has stemmed from the abolition of the List System in the late 90's - early 00's (proposed by the PCA) which restricted movement between counties (from memory I think ALL counties were restricted as to who they could sign each close season. Players that had rejected terms were placed on List A, players that were released were on LIst B. I think that counties could only sign 3 or 4 List A players in a certain time period but could sign unlimited List B players) and happened at the same time as the Two-Division Championship. I believe this was a better system as it meant all counties had to produce spend time producing their own players - using Notts as an example, a team of Robinson, Broad, Newell, Randall, Johnson, Pollard, Hadlee, French, Hemmings, Cooper and Saxelby only included two players recruited from outside Nottinghamshire, Broad and Hemmings, and one overseas, Hadlee, but was good enough to compete for trophies.
ReplyDeleteI also believe the 12-month contract is also a major factor as the bigger counties have the resources to tempt players to move. I shudder each winter when I read of counties losing hundreds of thousands of pounds each year - fortunately not us at present - and I wonder how they can survive. I know it will never happen but a return to seasonal contracts might be better economically for the counties and, quite possibly, be better for the players as if they had find other work in the winter, unless they play abroad, it gives them a break - and most importantly rest - from cricket and perhaps give them a look at a different environment in case cricket doesn't work out.
Agree with everything you say peak fan. Does Notts, Lancs and Surreys , financial clout come from them raking in lots of money from holding Test Matches or is it just down to them having more members? If it is the former then the distribution of the proceeds needs to be done in a more equitable manner so that the none test match ground counties can compete. Transfer fees for players below a certain age ,seems like a good idea.
ReplyDeleteMartin H
I was talking to my thirteen-year-old son tonight about how all this money in Saudi can sign top European players, and why so many Premier League Clubs (and also lower divisions) have been bought by overseas investors. And then I found myself saying, this might happen in cricket, but it will be wealthy Indian businessman who try and buy county clubs, not Saudis.
ReplyDeleteObviously, I hope this doesn't happen, but, sadly, many sports are becoming simply businesses, where it's all about making more and more money. We might be the last generation who love cricket for itself, and our counties, rather than how much money is mumped in to buy the best players.
When Cloughie won those titles with Derby and Forest, he didn't have a massive budget. Neither club had superstars. But look at the amount of money Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal etc spend on players, all thanks to foreign investors.
Of course sport changes, like society does, but I hope county cricket doesn't follow the path football has gone down. lLaying professional sport is a relatively short career, so players should be paid well, but not what Premier League footballers get paid.
As an aside, I thought it interesting that the four sides to qualify for t20 finals day were all from the southern group, shows what a poor division the north was
ReplyDelete