The heavy price of cost-cutting

On the ever-revolving merry-go-round that is county cricket, it’s that time of year again, the time when the horse-trading shifts from grapevine gossip, newspaper plants, surreptitious nods and conspiratorial winks to full-blown contract offers and negotiations. That import quotas for 2008 will be halved promises to make the upheavals more divisive, if, admittedly, more entertaining.

Although the planet’s premier domestic circuit still has no formal transfer system – there’s nothing so shamelessly or shabbily capitalistic as an actual fee – recent years have, rightly and properly, seen repressive tradition, underpinned by the feudal benefit system, consigned to a home in the neighbourhood of oblivion. Just four decades ago, Barry Knight, a Test allrounder, was obliged to sit out an entire season after having the unmitigated gall to leave Essex for Leicestershire; in 1972, Bob Willis was ordered to miss the first half of term after quitting Surrey for Warwickshire. The unsatisfactory List system having finally been discarded, and with decent wages having rightly replaced benefits as the most effective bait, freedom of movement is now enshrined.

The downside, however amusing to read about, is the bickering and infighting, the accusations of tapping-up and general conduct unbecoming. With the county chairmen having voted to henceforth confine themselves to one overseas signing per club (as distinct, of course, from fishing in that pool brimming with disenchanted South Africans), the competition for the jewels – as evinced by Warwickshire’s scruple-free pursuit of Sussex’s Mushtaq Ahmed – will doubtless ensure that the principles of gentlemanly conduct fly out of the window with even greater alacrity.

It didn’t have to be this way. The decision to reduce import quotas was entirely financial, a means of cutting those soaring wage bills. On every other level, it was wholeheartedly misguided. I have spoken to three highly respected county coaches and one prominent ECB official over the past few weeks and not one thought the rethink would reap any worthwhile rewards. In fact, they believed entirely the opposite.

Their message was unequivocal: playing with and against the galaxy’s best is precisely the sort of finishing school every aspiring Englishman should be compelled to attend. Indeed, with Inzamam-ul-Haq now sporting the white rose of Yorkshire, it is hard to think of another world-beater over the past 40 years who has not graced the shires, however briefly, bar Jeff Dujon, Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist, keepers all. Name me a leading spinner who has not played in the County Championship since it was split into two divisions in 2000 and I’ll buy you a lifetime’s subscription to the Home Shopping Network.

Consider the following XI: Langer, Sangakkara, Younis Khan, Chanderpaul, Inzamam, Laxman, Clark, Harbhajan, Nel, Kaneria and Murali. Or this one: Fleming, Marshall, Hussey (D), Katich, White, Klusener, Yasir Arafat, Vaas, Steyn, RP Singh and Mushtaq Ahmed. They’ve all been treading the boards here this season as unqualified foreign goods. And there was me forgetting the boy Warne. What a silly billy.

Nobody would be so daft as to claim that this necessarily prepares Englishmen (and honorary/naturalised ones) for the rigours of the international fray better than their counterparts across the globe. But don’t tell me that Mark Robinson, the Sussex cricket manager, is talking gibberish when he attributes the development of Luke Wright in good part to the experience and lessons he has gleaned from tackling the likes of Murali and Warne. Or that Surrey’s meteoric 18-year-old paceman Chris Jordan has not enhanced his prospects by dismissing Chanderpaul, Di Venuto and Inzamam in his first month as a pro. Or that Mark Alleyne, the most successful county captain of recent times, now chief coach at Gloucestershire, is kidding himself when he claims that even a month spent in the same dressing room as a notable achiever is preferable to none.

Yet by reducing the scope to attract the best - whose availability, in any event, is increasingly constricted - those county chairmen have chosen short-term gain over long-term investment. Besides, in all likelihood, those savings will be redistributed to/frittered away on (take your pick) Kolpak signings and wannabe Brummies, but that’s another highly-emotive issue for another time.

As for that hoary old theory that imports restrict opportunities for unequivocal Poms, do me a favour. Are its proponents really suggesting that there are more than 300 putative world-conquerors lurking out there between Land’s End and John O’Groats? Not even the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the body most concerned with preserving jobs for the (local) boys, would claim that with any vestige of faith or credibility.

It also bears mentioning that top-quality professional sport is about entertainment, not restrictive trade practices that deprive the audience. Would football’s Premiership be lionised the world over, much less attract so many sellouts and broadcasting billions, if it did not offer its customers such an array of talented wares? In cricket, the fact that centrally-contracted players, the nation’s best, seldom turn out for their counties was the rationale for restoring import quotas from one to two when the Championship embraced promotion and relegation: to give the clubs an alternative tool with which to raise interest, membership and crowds. That playing standards have risen, as is almost universally agreed, surely cannot be unconnected.

For all its dependance on profits from international fixtures (which can only improve if its home products are better prepared to graduate), county cricket would dearly love to stand more steadily on its own two feet. Measures such as this suggest its most powerful constituents would rather shoot a hole in each shoe.