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Back and Forth...

by raj

Ireland struggling to retain their players, goes the report.

The well-documented case of Morgan being a free man to represent England rather than his country, apart, one hears that Ed Joyce, once the bright future of English Cricket, prior to that of Irish Cricket, now wants to be the future of Irish Cricket again.

Pedanticism about ICC rules apart(and I know a certain gentleman who will bring the "rules" in now), one wonders how certain writers and premier cricket portals will react, if it was India poaching players in a similar fashion. Whines will abound, irrespective of conformity to rules. "It is not Cricket", the cry will go around.

If ICC is committed to the development of associate nations, what is it going to do about this? Clearly, this is not a case of Darren Patinson, whom Australia will not touch with a bargepole, getting into a pathetic English side. This is systematic poaching of a country's best players by its big-brother neighbour, by exploitation of loop holes in rules. Isnt this cynical? Isnt this a complete negation of ICC's pledge to develop cricket in associate nations? On one hand, ICC pumps in funds and programmes to develop Irish Cricket, and on the other, allows emigration of star players to England, systematically? How, pray, will an Irish school boy get the inspiration to aspire for representing Ireland in Cricket?

Of course, India has enough troubles pruning its selection to 15 players without leaving out equally deserving candidates so ICC is unlikely to run into a bitter situation where lesser countries like India exploit this rule. But, be sure of one thing - if and when that happens, there will be whining in certain countries, most of all, England, about India's big-brother poaching tendencies and how bad BCCI is for World Cricket, and how it is crushing Cricket in a neighbouring country.

In that context, one wonders if Pakistan should take in Afghanistan as an additional domestic team now, and ensure that the best among their current players are qualified and groomed for the 2015 world cup - to play for Pakistan. That will ensure that this rule is altered, and qualifying for another country made more stringent.Because an ICC rule is good only until it exclusively favours England, you know

9 comments:

Gireesh Subramaniam said...

Not only england.Australia also...

raj said...

Ofcourse, I didnt want to waste server space by mentioning the other countries - the "League of Good Nations" - that includes Australia in the first tier along with England, and 2 other countries who are part of the league but are inferior to Aus-Eng and form the second tier of that league

straight point said...

glad some one raised this point and what better than a fellow bored member...

despite country cricket and allegedly best of facilities and a 'professional' system has failed to produce quality players for england... hence kolpak and these poaching... you see england team of today and count on fingers the players who are truly from england...

they rightly call it 'associate' nation coz they are to 'assist' nations like england to pick and choose players without investing a penny in their development...

Ram5160 said...

I think its a hang over from the IPL, they insist on having 4 foreign players.

Homer said...

Raj,

For your perusal

http://wisdencricketer.com/item.php?parent_id=3&child_id=0&item_id=546

Interesting to note that the ECB is not only poaching the best Irish players but squeezing the ICU financially.

Cheers,

raj said...

Ram5160 - that was hilarious!

raj said...

That was a revealation for me, Homer.
Did you notice that there were absolutely no comments - Zero, zilch - for that article.
That, coupled with zero coverage on this issue in cricinfo, holier-than-thou Aussie newspapers and portals, Aussie and English blogs, Aussie blogs pretending to speak for the human race as a whole and preaching anit-racism, shows how much our moral guardians from England and Australia care for World Cricket.

slogger2010 said...

Fellow cricket lovers,
I didn’t know fantasy cricket was a picking up in the US, here is a link that I found www.lufthansa.com/cricket. We can create teams and also win good prizes.

Jonathan said...

England's treatment of Ireland overall is a disgrace. The rules are also unsatisfying (another example is Nannes - quite a different story there). Having said that, I can understand individual's desire to game the system as much as possible, including wanting to play Test cricket as long as they see it possible.

I don't think there is a perfect answer, but I have wondered whether it wouldn't be slightly better to go even further into strange territory, and allow different rules or catchments for limited overs and tests, rather than simply for associate and full members. (Why shouldn't an Afghani play for Pakistan, after all?)