England Ease Pain Of Absence (14 Dec 1996)

14 December 1996

England ease pain of absence

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

COUNTY clubs will be compensated in future whenever they rest England cricketers between Tests at the request of the national coach or the chairman of selectors.

In the continuing quest to haul England from sixth place in the Test ratings towards the top, this small item of news from the final Test and County Cricket Board meeting this week will have been greeted with relief by Mike Atherton and David Lloyd in Zimbabwe.

Compensation will be at the rate of #500 per match day, which would mean a handy sum of #2,500 for a player missing a championship match and subsequent Sunday League game. The amount is roughly commensurate with the compensation which counties already receive from the Board whenever one of their players is selected for England.

Last season the blow of having to play county fixtures without one or more of their leading players - Surrey, for example, were regularly without Graham Thorpe, Alec Stewart and Chris Lewis - was compensated to the tune of 75 per cent of the actual Test fee earned by the player. The basic Test fee of #2,850 is increased by degrees for every 10 Tests in which a cricketer has played. There was some resentment in the shires, most vehemently expressed by the Worcestershire president Tom Graveney - when Graeme Hick was involved - after Lloyd began asking counties to rest tired players last season.

Now compensation is available it is unlikely counties will in future exert their right to insist that one of their cricketers plays against the wishes of the England hierarchy, and so long as that remains true this seems a far better use of the Board`s money than the alternative suggestion of employing an England squad centrally.

Such a system works effectively in other countries, notably Australia and South Africa, whose international players play increasingly less domestic cricket. The snag, apart from removing the best home players from most matches in the Sheffield Shield or Castle Cup, is that the squad inevitably includes some players who lose form or favour with the selectors. The greater security enjoyed by players, who lose their place, does not come cheaply to the Board. Australians in their national squad, for example, are paid between #15,000 and #200,000.

It is easy to see how in some circumstances selectors might prefer a player from within the squad to one outside.

If this move towards compensation suggested a concession towards the national cause from counties hitherto tending towards parochialism, the TCCB`s decisions this week on the future employment of overseas players was a move in the other direction.

Far from accepting the cricket committee`s recommendation to experiment with no overseas players at all in 1999 and 2000, they decided to end the moratorium on signing new overseas players after 1998.

They agreed, however, to a Warwickshire proposal that no non- England qualified player will be able to sign more than a twoyear contract.

No replacement will be allowed for any overseas player who gets injured, or summoned by his country to tour during an English season, except in the case of a player called up in an emergency by a side actually touring England.

ENGLAND`S authorities said yesterday that Andrew Symonds remained technically eligible for Gloucestershire after his omission from the Australia A side against the touring West Indies at Melbourne.

The Test and County Cricket Board said that because Symonds, 21, had been only 12th man in the A side`s six-wicket win, his dualnationality status still applied, though the situation was only delaying the inevitable.

The Queensland batsman, who rejected an England A tour place last year, is expected to get his chance for Australia A against Pakistan in Sydney on Dec 28. That would settle the quasi-Englander issue once and for all.

Tony Brown, a TCCB official, said: "Hypothetically, if Andrew doesn`t play for Australia between now and next April, then he could return here and sign the official declaration for next season, claiming he had no intention of playing international cricket outside the European Union."

Gloucestershire gave Symonds a lucrative contract earlier this year, based on his remaining eligible for England.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)