Irish cricketers face contract hurdle

Irish cricketers may be prevented from playing county cricket in England following Ireland’s promotion to Test and Full Member status.

The England and Wales Cricket Board [ECB] will count Irish internationals as "overseas" players in English domestic cricket from September 2019.

Under the current ECB regulations, players must be a European Economic Area [EEA] national, and not play international cricket for a Full Member country outside the EEA before or during the course of their contract, in order to qualify as a domestic cricketer.

The ECB tightened the rules in 2009 to limit the number of non-England qualified players in county cricket.

English county sides are only allowed to play one overseas player in a championship match, and two in the Twenty20 Blast competition.

Up until June 2017, England was the only Full Member country in the EEA, but Ireland's promotion has put the ECB in a legal quandary.

"We were aware that this could be an issue, and we instigated talks with the ECB to see if we could work around it," Richard Holdsworth, Cricket Ireland’s high performance director, told the Times [Ireland].

Many of the leading Ireland players hold dual British and Irish nationality, but even those with British passports would not have an automatic right to play in England's County Championship after 2019 because they would not qualify to represent the England team.

"The ECB spoke to their legal team, who advised them that they could not favour Irish internationals without it discriminating against other EEA-qualified players, such as Zimbabwe or South Africa internationals [with dual nationality with an EEA-area country]," Holdsworth said.

Eight Ireland internationals with county contracts will be affected by the ruling, including captain William Porterfield, who plays for Warwickshire, and his county and international team-mate Boyd Rankin.

Cricket Ireland's highest-paid centrally contracted player, believed to be Ed Joyce, is paid around €50,000, while Ireland's top earners in county cricket earn double that amount.

The ruling is likely to pose a particular quandary for Paul Stirling, the Middlesex batman, who is not one of Ireland's top earners but at 26, could play another ten years of county cricket.

Cricket Ireland could introduce new central contracts in 2019 to make up the shortfall in the players’ salaries, but that would cost the organisation around €500,000, money Irish cricket's governing body would prefer to spend on facilities and player development.

Cricket Ireland says it expected Irish-qualified players to play a more limited role in English county cricket after Ireland’s promotion to Test status, even without the new ECB ruling.

"In 2019, we expect Ireland to be up and running in Test cricket, and part of a 13-team ODI league [from 2020]," Holdsworth said.

"That would mean Ireland players would be unavailable for maybe up to six months of the year anyway, which would make them less attractive to county sides."

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