Cricket: Counties to Be Paid Per England Player

The England and Wales Cricket Board is to offer counties cash bonuses for fielding England-qualified players in domestic competitions in an effort to combat the steadily rising influx of foreign players.

At present, European legislation allows counties to circumvent regulations and field cricketers not qualified for England who would otherwise be prevented from playing by a rule restricting them to two overseas players.

Now an annual subsidy per county of around £1.3m will include incentives. Although the precise amounts are not likely to be disclosed until the end of the year when the ECB budget is approved, it is believed the handouts as they stand will be cut by up to £50,000, which will then be redistributed according to certain criteria. These relate to players qualified for England at various levels, the qualifications of coaching staff and the successful implementation and management of an academy.

The ECB has also blocked the indiscriminate employment of overseas players as a stop-gap measure. Currently a county is entitled to replace an overseas player who is subsequently required by their national side or gets injured. It has led to numerous short-term signings of whom some, such as the Australian Glenn McGrath who played briefly for Middlesex last summer, remain under the direct control of their home union. This can be both expensive and detrimental to the development of England-qualified players.

With effect from the 2006 season, however, all overseas players and prospective substitutes must be nominated before July 1 and there will be no substitutes for injury and no substitutes for substitutes. More than 30 players appeared in county competitions last year while neither being qualified for England nor registered as overseas players. Of these a high proportion came from the southern hemisphere but held British passports because of residency or ancestry.

Others, such as the former Zimbabwe Test player Grant Flower, who will be at Essex next season, have qualified through the Kolpak ruling - a case brought to the European court by Maros Kolpak, a Slovakian handball player who wished to play in Germany - which makes it illegal to discriminate against those from countries which have reciprocal trade agreements with the European Union, providing they have a work permit.

Bonus Points

The number of a county's players who have played for England

The number of under-23 England-qualified players

The number of England-qualified contracted players in major domestic competitions

The level of qualification of coaching staff

The number of players a county provides for England A and age-group sides

The implementation and management of a county academy