Kolpak ruling a win-win for SA and England

The England and Wales Cricket Board recently pulled off a coup through the passing of the New Home Office laws. The laws were sought by England’s cricket administrators as a means of fighting the “scourge” of Kolpak cricketers plying their trade in the County Championship.

Now, with this coming from the BBC Sport website: “Only players who have held a valid work permit for four years will be able to continue to be employed as though they were EU citizens by counties. That is unless they have played one Test match in the past two years or five Test matches in the past five.”

Well, well, well. They were talking about doing something recently and surprisingly (the ECB seems to operate at a snail’s pace from these shores) they have done so. For those who are unfamiliar with what a Kolpak player actually is, a brief history lesson is in order.

In 2003, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of Slovakian Maros Kolpak, a handball player, who was seeking work in Germany. The decision allowed players from countries plus regions with associate trade agreements with the EU, such as South Africa and the West Indies, to be treated as non-overseas players.

This latest decision follows the ECB shift in funding structures, where they supplied counties with funding on a per-capita basis in relation to how many England-qualified players were in a county’s squad.

The Kolpak era reached its nadir in 2008 when 11 players out 22 were on the field when Northants faced Leicestershire. The vast majority of those players were South African. In all, the 2008 season saw more than 60 Kolpak players playing cricket in England, enough for nearly six cricket teams.

Players such as Ryan McLaren, Charl Langeveldt and Jacques Rudolph played their cricket under the Kolpak banner, but with the new ruling, only Rudolph will be able to continue playing for Yorkshire because his last Test appearance in 2006 just squeezes him in, and after next season he would’ve played for Yorkshire over four seasons, therefore making him eligible to play for the country indefinitely.

While the ECB is seeking to provide more opportunities for English-qualified cricketers, the days of Kolpak players are numbered. The benefits for the England team are obvious, with more players getting exposed to first-class cricket, and this is perhaps the first step in the ECB’s attempts to consolidate quality cricket in England. They run a two-division split at the moment, with 18 first-class sides (way too many) playing from season to season.

With more English players entering the system, the top counties will begin throwing the chequebook at the “best of the rest” to shore up their “Englishness” in a sense. This might strengthen the first division, but what they should be thinking about is a franchise system like the one we have here in South Africa. Even though it was unpopular at the time, CSA should be congratulated on their vision since franchise cricket is producing better cricketers and making the game more sustainable at a financial level.

The benefits of this decision can also be seen in a South African context. Cricketers that might have taken Kolpak status will now stay in the country, making them available to play for their country, making what is already a competitive top domestic tier even tougher to break into. The Australians laid the blueprint for success with only six teams, so perhaps the fruit is finally ripening, with class players such as JP Duminy and Wayne Parnell to a lesser extent being able to hold their own and more in the international arena.