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.
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Topic: North Staffs league points deduction (Read 2598 times)