Newell's "conflict of interest"

Transfer ‘conflict of interest’ claim rejected, but counties seek solution.

PTG Editor.

Friday, 22 September 2017.

PTG 2255-11419.

England Director of Cricket (COD) Andrew Strauss has hit back at Durham chairman Ian Botham’s claims England have created a conflict of interest by having selectors who also serve as county DOCs.  Botham has criticised the system of cricket transfers after losing one of the county’s best prospects to Nottinghamshire and called for a "football-style transfer system or similar system of compensation” in order to remove the potential for conflict of interest by preventing serving [DOCs] acting as selectors and to better regulate the behaviour of agents” (PTG 2254-11411, 21 September 2017).

Strauss said: "[Botham] is 100 per cent wrong if he’s implying that [the Durham player] has gone to Nottinghamshire on the back of one of our selectors saying he’s got a better chance of playing for England coming to my county”.  “I believe that if players are going to move from one county to another they are thinking about the quality of the club, what the club can offer them and how playing for that team might further their chances of playing cricket for England”. He  doesn't "think the fact that an England selector might be a [county DOC] influences their decision”.

However, ‘London Daily Telegraph’ journalist Scyld Berry wrote that Botham’s comments "strikes a chord in cricket followers who have a vested interest in fairness”.  He went on to say though that "the sympathy we may feel for Durham [over its treatment by the English and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) last year because of its financial irregularities] should not cloud the overall issue of transfers from one county to another” (PTG 1938-9747, 5 October 2016). "Durham will recover, in time”, says Berry, "so the solution should not be hastily manufactured now in order to protect them specifically".

Berry doesn’t think there is "any chance" of a level playing field in county cricket for “the bigger [counties] will always be preying upon the smaller ones". "The nearest we can get to a solution is to reward a county even more for producing a top-class England cricketer - and the ECB are going to look at increasing the financial incentives - and also impose a time for transfer activity. Then we would not have the unseemly scramble for players in mid-season which has provoked considerable resentment".

Journalist Nick Hoult, who also writes for the ’Telegraph’, says that “leading figures at County Championship sides" have backed Botham's call. He quotes Middlesex chief executive Richard Goatley as saying: “Counties need to be protected from losing their young players.  A level of financial compensation is appropriate, but not a transfer battle with fees and windows and agents getting involved”.

Hoult says that call was echoed by Surrey who did not receive any compensation when their promising 21-year-old batsman Dominic Sibley moved to Warwickshire earlier this year. That has led Surrey to write to the other 17 first-class counties proposing the following formula: “Any home developed player below the age of 24 who chooses to move to a new county, despite being offered a new and improved contract by his home county, would attract a compensation fee payable by the new county of [twice] the final salary offer by the home county”.  Surrey chief executive Richard Gould added: "We believe a [rival] county should pay compensation for a player who moves under the age of 24”.

Other ideas are also being considered. Gloucestershire’s chief executive Will Brown told Hoult that he would "be quite supportive of a football-style transfer window” where deals could be done, while Yorkshire’s chief Mark Arthur favours keeping and extending the system of loans. “I personally believe players should stay with their clubs [until the end of the season] but they should be allowed to go out on loan - and if that loan becomes a permanent move then so be it”, he said.

Hoult warns though that “the trouble is that by the time a formula is agreed among the counties, it is likely Durham will be denuded still further with the departure of several other players”.  He says “the punishment the ECB meted out on Durham, for their financial irregularities, has perhaps been even more brutal than they intended”.