Custom Bats Cricket Forum
General Cricket => Your Cricket => Topic started by: six and out on February 04, 2019, 08:54:38 PM
-
Any Forumites caught up in this.... or know about it? Sounds a bit crazy... it says Elworth were deducted 241 points!!
https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/news/points_deduction_wrangle_continues_in_staffordshire_as_burslem_face_suspension_at_the_hands_of_league-wide_vote.html?platform=hootsuite (https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/news/points_deduction_wrangle_continues_in_staffordshire_as_burslem_face_suspension_at_the_hands_of_league-wide_vote.html?platform=hootsuite)
-
Yes, this League is immediately south of the Cheshire pyramid I play in so it has been a source of much conversation since the back end of last season.
There is a lot of money floating around that league with a few sides even paying second XI players. The only restriction is that you can only register one overseas player which I believe comes from the ECB. Essentially a few sides had a registered overseas player, then paid other players born overseas who hold British passports and played them alongside their registered overseas player. Under ECB rules, they aren't eligible as a domestic player if they spend more than a certain number of days outside the country in the previous year. The clubs involved seem to have taken the gamble that no one involved at league level would know how long a player had been out of the country for, and that no one at the UK Border Agency would be bothered about league cricket.
The Club I am most familiar with is Elworth who have Pakistani international Yasir Ali as their long standing overseas player but then also played Adnan Ghaus and Raj Kumar who have playesd at first class level in Pakistan and India respectively alongside him. The 3 played in the majority of their games, and the league rules state that you lose any points gained in a fixture where you fielded an ineligible players so they lost almost every point they gained over the season
The point it controversy is that the league chairman is a member of a club who would have been relegated but arrived due to point deductions handed out to other clubs. However it came to light after Ghaus caused Satfforshire to be docked points in a minor counties fixture he turned out in for them after someone checked how a player who plays first class cricket in Pakistan could possibly have spent the winter in England.
-
Wow, i can't work out if that is a bit silly on the part of the club's to gamble with the rules like that or quite crazy punishment.
-
Given the amount of clubs who brown envelope players.. even if they did make a ‘mistake’ or an actual mistake... who cares. Everyone knows clubs buy success now and if people or parents fall for it then more fool them.
Just let them get on with it, the local league and board just need to effectively ignore the club.
-
What’s gained financially by paying these players to be in the league above?
-
Given the amount of clubs who brown envelope players.. even if they did make a ‘mistake’ or an actual mistake... who cares. Everyone knows clubs buy success now and if people or parents fall for it then more fool them.
Just let them get on with it, the local league and board just need to effectively ignore the club.
The league used to have a 1 paid player per team limit but due to the unenforceability of this rule, it was scraped and there is no limit on how many players can be paid. However, I understand that the overseas player restriction is ECB lead so a league has no choice on this one.
At the start of 2018, all clubs were bombarded by the ECB with notifications about the tightening up of the rules on overseas players coming to play league cricket so there is no excuse for making a mistake. And as competitive as leagues like this are, the points deductions pale into insignificance compared to the penalties for breaching immigration rules if you have been found to have employed a player who had no right to work here
-
What’s gained financially by paying these players to be in the league above?
Nothing in my view which is why my club left this league just over a decade ago. Huge amounts of money are spent every year paying players at clubs whose facilities often lack investment and who often have very little structure below a 1st XI of semi-professionals. There are some clubs who have significant financial resources who can comfortably afford to play that game, but many others struggle from year to year and the decline can be rapid when things do go wrong
-
There were some well publicised issues with the rule last summer when ex-county player Jim Allenby was caught up (see link below). Although being a British citizen, a UK resident, being qualified to play cricket for England and having played county cricket for years as a domestic player, he was classified as an overseas player for league purposes because he was born abroad and spends a period of time out of the country (earning a living). Similarly, the likes of Ben Stokes (and before that Andrew Strauss, Matt Prior, etc.) would have been classed as overseas players.
https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/banner/staffordshire_league_hands_out_mammoth_points_deductions_in_player_registration_saga_which_could_end_up_in_court.html (https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/banner/staffordshire_league_hands_out_mammoth_points_deductions_in_player_registration_saga_which_could_end_up_in_court.html)
-
The key point is time spent out of the county. Those lads would have been fine as long as they remained in country for a period of time after the season had ended. It catches those whose main living is earned abroad but who come here for 5 months in the summer to play club cricket.
-
At the level I play at, the only time a teammate gets a brown envelope is when we run out of loo-roll in the old park pavilion.