Opinion: Does County Cricket Need A Transfer System?

Opinion: Does Cricket Need A Transfer System?

James Taylor's predicted move away from Leicestershire re-opens the debate about a need for a transfer system in cricket.

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County cricket is at a crossroads. Does it go the way of football and allow the moneyed clubs to procure all the best and brightest young talent, thus making any battle for trophies a three or four-horse race? Does it want to lose its long and proud tradition whereby any of the 18 counties can realistically win the Championship? In short, does our summer game want to fully embrace capitalism and all the free-market obligations that that entails?

I think most fans of the county game would answer no to those questions. We want to retain the competitiveness that has given us gripping climaxes to last two county seasons. And we want to be charmed by the heart-warming stories of cash-strapped clubs being led to title glory by long-serving and loyal legends of the game. So what is the solution?

Winston Churchill once said that capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. In the case of cricket clubs those blessings are the likes of the Taylors, the Denlys, and, who knows, in the future, the Shiv Thakors and the Reece Topleys.

In a normal profession those players would naturally gravitate towards the best paid jobs and leave their educators, usually the state, behind. They would then, of course, reward those educators for their efforts in the form of taxes and that money would then be used to train the next generation – and so the cycle continues.

In cricket, unlike even in premiership football - that Mecca to capitalism - this doesn’t happen. The likes of Leicestershire or Kent do not currently receive any of football’s compensation or solidarity payments when they lose their best and brightest young talent to the Manchester Uniteds of cricket, meaning that they suffer a gradual depletion of their resources which causes the problems to escalate.

Until recently, this lack of reward didn’t matter as players were reluctant to move clubs and the financial rewards for staging international cricket – the single most important factor in making some clubs so rich - were not so high.

That has all changed over the past decade or so, with the likes of Test match endowed Surrey now able to spend three times as much as the likes of Test matchless Kent on player salaries. This means that, as well as producing their own players, Surrey are able to poach the best young talent from the smaller counties without paying any form of compensation for the training and nurturing that the player has received through that county’s Academy system.

Numerous moves have been suggested over the past few years, including salary caps and the like, but nothing has really changed the view that county cricket is sleepwalking into a two-tier oblivion.

Perhaps the only answer is to adopt a transfer system similar to that used in football – only to perhaps go further – so that the smaller counties can be compensated for their losses. After all, the principle aim of counties – unlike for premiership football teams - is not to win trophies but to produce England players, so why should Leicestershire et al be penalised financially for doing just that?

Daniel Grummitt

© Cricket World 2011