EU threat to overseas rule

John Carr, ECB's director of cricket operations: 'It's a worry for the game and for European sport' © Getty Images

Just when it looked as if the EU-player debate could not get any stickier, along comes a European Court ruling to pour a heap of molasses on proceedings. The case of Maros Kolpak, a Slovakian handball player who sued a German club for restraint of trade, means that counties could now be able to bypass the ECB's two-overseas-players rule.

Kolpak successfully argued that he was being unfairly discriminated against when his German club, TSV Ostringen, dropped him for league matches in accordance with league rules that restricted them to two non-EU players. The judges ruled that "such discrimination cannot be justified on sporting grounds" and that any citizen of a country that has an associate agreement with the EU should have the same working rights as a European worker, provided he/she has a work permit. This includes members of the Cotonou agreement, a group that comprises African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

Until now an ECB agreement with Work Permits UK, the government agency issuing work permits, has ensured that only players of international standard can be employed to play cricket in Britain - players who would be unable to qualify as a non-overseas player under ECB registration rules. But the working holiday visa, thanks to changes made by the Home Office last year, now offers work permits to Commonwealth citizens under the age of 30 for up to two years. Young players with a working holiday visa, coming to the UK from a Cotonou country (for example West Indies or South Africa), could not be discriminated against by ECB's two-player restriction and would have to be allowed to play with the same freedom as an EU player.

"It's a worry for the game and for European sport," says John Carr, ECB's director of cricket operations. He and ECB's director of legal affairs, Mark Roper-Drimie, are in talks with other affected sports, including ice hockey and rugby union, over what steps they can take to protect the development of young English players. "We are looking at performance-related fee payments which will link county payments to criteria such as the development of young English players," says Roper-Drimie, who says that even an unwritten agreement between counties not to sign `Kolpak' players would be unlawful. "From the larger perspective there's little you can do."