The overseas recruits who can improve Australian domestic cricket this season

hi Peter, all good here and likewise, hope you and yours are safe and well. There have to be any number of coaches from County cricket with time on their hands, over the northern winter, who could head Down Under for 3 or 4 months to work with our guys. I also wonder how many ex-players could be coaxed to do some mentoring? I was thinking about Damien Martyn as an example; a player who stopped playing and, as far as I know, has stayed away from that aspect of the game, but has lots to offer.

Thank you for that response Paul, as always insightful and constructive. I'd so be on board with those superstar coaches you mention. Greg Shipperd always comes to mind. Perhaps coaches in other countries could have a role, although we'd have to pay well. For myself it would certainly be exciting to go along to a Shield match and see a former test player from another country out there, but having said that, have my doubts whether this direction would really boost crowd size. And I remain with that doubt that their presence just holds back someone else. Hope things are well with you.

hi Peter, just picking up on some of the excellent comments you've made about this issue. At the end of the day, a move like this needs to have a net positive gain, both for the State and (hopefully) for Australian cricket. My question is, what would be the net gain for any overseas player taking up a State contract? We're not going to get any superstar players, so that rules out a significant increase in crowd, numbers and any player that comes in, will only be able to work with a relatively small player group. If we use Amla as an example, he can only help batsmen and this assumes he has the skills to be able to translate what he's been able to achieve in his career, into meaningful advice for those he's mentoring. I'd much rather see three things happen; we make sure all States have superstar coaches, who are capable of developing players of all types. As part of this, each Association makes as much use as they can of those coaches to coach the next few levels down. The final thing is to make sure the talent pools which do exist are spread more widely. There are a lot of very good players in the bigger States who only get a game when the test guys aren't there. That makes no sense to me if there are players in other States regularly getting games but regularly underperforming.

Scrapping the barrel comes to mind..

No worries Peter and thank you also ... There’s no doubt that the young sozzie players gained a lot more for their development in the seasons Gary Sobers played there than any of the Quozzie players during Botham’s season. The mentoring is even more important than runs and/or wickets, and apart from zero mentoring, Botham didn’t even make that many runs or take too many wickets.

Thanks for your thougts The Good The Bad, they are valuable. About all I can add is maybe trialling what you describe for a couple of seasons and see what results. I can see that the presence of an overseas player of this calibre would be inspiring to others in the side and possibly that player could have a role in mentoring. I continue to worry about our lack of depth as seen by some ordinary Australia A performances and would hope this initiative didn't block the path of a good prospect. Would be interesting how the Australian Cricket Association might respond to your ideas.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if he still had a gig at home or not, but on checking it seems he has been included in Western Province's squad for next summer.

And Amla playing in the SA domestic comp?

Following the Rebel Tours to South Africa and the subsequent banning of those participating, South African Domestic cricket was compelled to absorb many of those players into the local comp.. This led to teams bring reinforced by the likes of Haysman, McCurdy, Gooch, Wiley, Franklin Stevenson, Kallicharan, Sylvester Clarke and many more.. The knock on was that the Currie Cup became the highest standard domestic comp in the World and foundations were laid for the very good National teams next 2 decades.. I don't support the idea that the Shield is a development league for Aussie Cricketers and that by recruiting abroad will deny an Australian a spot. Development should take place lower down....

Peter, I reckon as long as it was restricted to a maximum of one import per state it might be good, as long as it was an established great near the end of his career, such as Amla, rather than a young star on the rise, such as Pant. Pant might score more runs for you, but he won’t have the same aura in the dressing room, but will in fact use the presence of a seasoned shield performer like Trevor Barsby to improve his own game for the benefit of India’s future test match fortunes. Yorkshire discovered this in the very early 1990s when they first imported a teenage Tendulkar and then a year or two later Richie Richardson who was now 30ish and still an excellent batsman. Problem with Queensland importing Ian Botham was that it was a desperate attempt to win our first shield, thinking he would perform the same heroics as in the 1981 Ashes, but what people should have realised beforehand was that Botham was never going to get anywhere near the same inspiration playing for an Australian state as when fronting up for his own country against Australia in a test match. The other thing about Botham is that he was a lazy trainer and basically got sacked because he refused to attend net sessions and this is a very legitimate time and place that the rising stars in a shield team need the presence of a veteran legend like Botham. Botham seemed to think he was just being paid to show up and presumably draw crowds in but there was a lot more to earning his pay check than that. QCA were right to terminate his contract. Assuming you restrict it to one per state, and look as much into the character and training ethic of the potential import as well as his established status in the game, I personally think that if a local player is not in contention on merit for one of the remaining 10 spots then bad luck, keep playing grade cricket until he is. England’s mistake up until the 1990s was that they allowed two imports per county which was one too many.

Good point. He did last year and his team won the domestic comp. Gee some of the players over there have great first names - Remembrance, Privilege, Innocent, Talent

I'm glad this was raised in an article. It's been discussed and debated now and then since Ian Botham played for the Queensland Shield team decades ago. My hesitation is that the Shield competition exists largely for the development of players for a national team. This means placing an international player into our system potentially takes the place that could be occupied by a potential player coming through. This is a significant issue in netball at the moment. There's many international players in the national league which is slowing local player development. The result of this is likely to be seen in the approaching series against New Zealand. (Admittedly there's more internationals than I'd expect us to see in the Shield competition). Even if attendances to Shield matches increased (and it'd probably only be marginal), I think the impacts wouldn't be beneficial at a time when we aren't seeing a depth of talent coming through.

Wouldn't Muzarabani play in Zim's domestic comp?

I'm a bit on the fence with this, Arnab. Right now, we don't have a schedule of matches, which would be useful in knowing what players might be available for what matches. I'm also not sure how 3 guys playing with (potentially) second XI players, will help improve the domestic summer? There's no doubt guys could learn plenty from Amla, but not sure they'd learn much from two guys who are new to Australian conditions. I guess they might all "improve" domestic cricket through their performances, but the trade off is their taking the spot (and the contract) from an Aussie based player. I'd have thought competitive pitches would be a priority, as would scheduling to allow as many top grade players a chance to play 4 day games. Get those right and it could be a very good domestic summer.

As long as they are veterans who our up and coming youngsters can glean knowledge from, and not rising young stars who will use our scene to develop their own game.

It would be nice to see some overseas players in the Shield but I reckon the Shield and the one day cup are sadly seen more these days as development matches rather than legit competitions worth winning. In the past there’s been the odd boom recruit but these days they’ll spend any $ on players for the bash. Although perhaps we could see someone called up from grade cricket like Crane a few years ago.