How bigger joke is Joyce for England?

[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.

[RazabQ]

Agreed.

On the same token, if Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not independent countries why should they get their separate teams?

[akabir77]

yes why?

[James90]

And why do Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, The Bahamas and Guyana (although 5 seperate counties) play as one?

[AsifTheManRahman]

Originally posted by James90
And why do Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, The Bahamas and Guyana (although 5 seperate counties) play as one?

whereas they play soccer under different names?

[Xavier]

I think it is good to have only one team for the West Indies, they have become this way an international force in cricket and they are countries with same language and tradition, so IMO there's no shame in it...

They play separately at football and Jamaica could even qualify for '98 World Cup!

btw I think there's no sense in having a cricketer playing on the international scene for two different countries: once you have played a ODI or test game you shouln't change your team, there's no sense in it!

[Trueblue]

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.

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.

[Xavier]

Sort of "cricket-colonialism"...

What I think: Joyce is Irish, so he should play for Ireland, otherwise he should get english citizenship (or "cricket-citizenship") and play for England, but playing for more than a country is a joke.

Under this aspect cricket should learn for football... you don't see Ronaldinho and Shevchenko play for Spain and Italy because they play for clubs from those countries.

[James90]

Amjad Khan was originally named in the Danish squad but then got injured. Although he did play a game for Kent towards the end of the ICC Trophy