Quote:
Originally posted by Rob
I think it is a complete joke, that whilst qualifying to play for England Ed Joyce can go and play for Ireland in an international, and not have to wait longer.
Now, he is qualifyed to play for England, and played for Ireland 2 weeks ago!!
What a farce.
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I agree it is problematic and apparently unsatisfactory. However there is sometimes an equal complaint about the standard of cricket of the associate countries. It doesn't matter which one.
Any cricketer is going to want to play at the highest standard they can and who can blame them or would do otherwise themselves. That standard lies with the countries playing test cricket. So to take the example of Joyce he has proved good enough to play professionally with a county and is rated by some as good enough to play test cricket for England. He has served a qualification period to achieve this. Otherwise he would not get the chance to play Test cricket at all. When/if he plays he becomes unavailable for Ireland and would have to serve a 4 year period to play for them again as happened to Brown and Hamilton for Scotland.
If this qualification period for England meant he could not play for an associate country it is effectively depriving them of their best players. It would affect all such players with any such aspiration ie. perhaps every such player in county cricket. The idea of the regulations is not to cherry pick the best players from the associates and then probably not even play them!
As it is these countries often cannot get their best players from the counties, Aussie state cricket, or elsewhere, for internationals and then people complain about them being too weak! It has just happened to Scotland again this week. However it is true that these organisations pay their wages and so there the argument ends.
Would the ICC Trophy have been stronger for players such as O'Brien (Ireland and Kent) who wasn't 'encouraged' to play, Amjad Khan (Denmark and Kent) who was named but didn't play and what about Geraint Jones (PNG and Kent)
Holland, in my opinion lost their crucial match with Canada when two players went back to Essex and Middlesex. Fortunately they got the last World Cup place otherwise it would have cost them USD500,000 in ICC grants.
Denmark might also have qualified with Khan in their bowling attack.
So it is contradictory but it is also fairer to these associate countries for the level of cricket they play currently. But they will still continue to lose their best players.
Edited on, July 26, 2005, 3:26 PM GMT, by Trueblue.