News: Kolpak agreement killing Cricket - Majola

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Nasir M. Khan

 Looks like this issue of losing national players to counties, and then to England is not only affecting the associates, but South Africa as well…… in fact, for some reason it is particularly affecting South Africa, and not England or New Zealand that much.

Gerald Majola has made a statement that Kolpak Agreements are killing Cricket…. and that we may see a situation where the best players are best county cricket trying to qualify for England, while only the second stringers are playing in the national teams………

Why are South Africans trying to qualify for England? Is it because of the quota issue? Why didnt the ICC talk about these things in the AGM? Why did they waste time in making stupid rules like ‘free hits’ for ODIs? And on that note, if they wanted to try something like that, they should have first tampered with Twenty20 games rather than ODIs……….

Filed under: General Cricket

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3 Responses to “News: Kolpak agreement killing Cricket - Majola”

  1. Andrew Nixon, on July 25th, 2007 at 1:11 am Said:

    The quota issue is part of it, but that’s not all.

    1. There are less top tier first-class teams in South Africa these days, meaning that there isn’t as many playing spots available.
    2. A county professional earns more money than most South Africans who aren’t national team players.
    3. A high-skilled South African can be paid less than a lower-skilled English player due to the different levels of wages in each country.

    I can’t see it affecting New Zealand much, there aren’t any Kolpaks from New Zealand at the moment in county cricket that I can think of. And don;t say Hamish Marshall or I’ll have to slap you!

  2. Art, on July 25th, 2007 at 4:01 pm Said:

    Kolpak or Bosman, these rulings become so convoluted that in essence the spirit of the game is lost.

    There is of course no sense in making an appeal to english counties to only use home grown players because it is always more alluring to have some ‘name’ player on your books than not although looking at the current list of “Kolpak” players there are very few I would go out of my way to watch in County cricket.

  3. Bruce Gaskell, on July 26th, 2007 at 2:16 pm Said:

    There is no reason why this SHOULD be a problem in Cricket. The counties could barely fund a garden tea party without help from the ECB. The ECB in turn are dependant on competitive rivals on the international circuit for their revenue.
    There are ways around the Kolpak ruling, the ECB can make funds dependant on England qualified players, indeed they have done, but the penalties are not yet great enough.

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