The Hindu : ECB will have more contract players

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 06, 2002

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Sport - Cricket

ECB will have more contract players

By Ted Corbett

LONDON May 5. In a revolutionary change up to 20 players will be fully contracted to England for a year in the future and their wages will be wholly paid by the England and Wales Cricket Board. The plan will not be in place in time for the tour by India in the second half of the summer and is expected to be implemented at the end of the season.

"It is a solution to planning the management of players which is sure to be adopted throughout the world in time,'' said a highly-placed ECB official. It has already caused controversy even though the meetings which decided this move only ended on Thursday afternoon.

The biggest debate is bound to be centred around the new pay structure. It means that the 18 counties that have paid players wages ever since contracts were brought in two years ago — and were compensated by the ECB — will now have to pay the ECB if the players are made available. That is expected to be a rare occurrence for some of the established stars like Nasser Hussain, the England captain, Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick, Graham Thorpe and Marcus Trescothick, their top-rated stars with the highest wages.

The players in the two lower pay levels may play for their counties more often and some of the younger, or fringe, players may only play Tests or one-day internationals infrequently or when the A-list men are injured. This proposal has to be approved by a two-thirds majority and it is expected that there will be a strong reaction by counties, which feel that as they brought their players to the fore they should not be forced to pay for using them when they are available.

It will also be seen by some as another sign of the eroding power of the counties which have down all the years been the backbone of the England structure. All England's Tests teams have been chosen from county teams, which paid their wages while the controlling body — first MCC, then the Test and County Cricket Board and now the ECB — paid a fee for each Test and one-day international. Now that is about to change and although ECB emphasised its importance to the success of England today they also knew that it would cause resentment and outright annoyance by the more reactionary county committeemen.

I understand that Rod Marsh, head of the England Academy, will be the key figure in this scheme as he will maintain contact with those contracted players who are still with their counties and not required by England, leaving Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, to concentrate on the international scene. The new scheme has the backing of David Graveney, the chairman of selectors.

"I see a young cricketer making natural steps through a county contract, on to the Academy and then to an ECB contract and finally England selection,'' he said.

In preparation for the Sri Lanka series, which begins on May 15, and the Indian tour, England has offered contracts to only 11 players although the International Management Group responsible for the team has indicated it may be willing to put another name on the list. All this thinking will change when the winter contracts are announced in September as England set off for the mini World Cup in Sri Lanka, its Ashes tour to Australia and the World Cup in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

If those contracts were handed out now they would certainly go to Alec Stewart, who has been left out following his absence from tours this winter, Craig White who has made two impressive scores already this summer, Mark Ramprakash, still scoring heavily for Surrey even though he has no contract, Ian Bell of Warwickshire who is the outstanding young batsman of the moment, and Alex Tudor who has begun the season with a series of devastating bowling spells.

By the end of the summer in which the Sri Lankan batsmen and the Indian spinners will thoroughly test England the party of contracted players will probably be unrecognisable from the current squad as it faces one of the toughest winters in recent years. "But,'' says a senior official, "we feel the way forward is with more contracts.''

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