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[northernboy1987]

maybe...but he may be thinking with the current set up with England he has a better chance of playing for England with the current County Champions rather than an 'unfashionable' club like Northants.
That may be how he is looking at it.

I know it seems a touch cut-throat but if this was the case could you blame him? Most young lads would do whatever it took to represent their country and rightly so in my opinion.

[ppccopener]

I know it seems a touch cut-throat but if this was the case could you blame him? Most young lads would do whatever it took to represent their country and rightly so in my opinion.

players move around much more these days.Players who stay with one club for life are few and far between now. You just need to look at the James Taylor situation, right thru the Leics system and their star player, moved on to a bigger more high profile club.Willey is exactly the same.
No I don't blame any cricketer for wanting to do that,it's  short career and if they don't have ambitious to play for England what's the point?
Willey has an attachment to Northants( I remember his dad playing for them) but he has made a decision he thinks will benefit his career.
The question is really, what becomes of the lower less rich clubs? some of them are in financial trouble and presuming things will rectify themselves on their own is just not going to happen.

[cricketbadger]

Fantastic move for him and the club, there was rumours of this happening in the winter.

He should be able to learn plenty from Sidebottom, and by the end of next summer (I reckon Sidearse has at least 1 more year in him) he can take over the mantle, and smash some later order runs, which will be key when Rashid and Plunkett are with England

[shane]

I expect in the future County cricket will have a radical change as it's not financially viable for a large proportion of clubs, but what that change will be is anyone's guess.
I don't think myself it's impossible to see clubs merging to create a smaller Championship.

It is essential that the smaller counties survive and flourish. Have the widest possible talent pool with it being concentrated by moves to the top clubs. Who knows whether Willey would have made it in professional cricket without Northants?

[ProCricketer1982]

It is essential that the smaller counties survive and flourish. Have the widest possible talent pool with it being concentrated by moves to the top clubs. Who knows whether Willey would have made it in professional cricket without Northants?

People will spout crap about cream rising to the top but it simply does t work like that. People aren't picked because of talent alone, they need to have gone to the rig school,,had the right parents or been stupidly lucky somehow to get spotted. I think football years ago as,it's that for every  Steven Gerard that was known about (1), there were at least ten of similar quality who never get picked up (they used the fact we have 70m people etc). The same will apply and probably does already with cricket.

Of course, doesn't mean the others reach the same level... They might never play, get injured early etc etc but the talent is there if you can find it. The talent pool is poor currently as there are too many counties but.. But IF cricket was in state schools, on TV and the correct systems (manned by decent coaches/talent spotters and not the idiots currently as board/county youth coaches ), running state school games, raising the. Umber of village teams back up etc.. You'd find more people play, so the talent pool would rise, so counties would slowly get higher quality youth through, compared to the current players trying to make it at teams like Glamorgan, notprthants, Leicester etc.

[Bats_Entertainment]

"Average county pro" and all that.