Sport Today

When I first started watching county cricket my Somerset team had Viv
RIchards and Joel Garner and we'd play games against say a Hampshire
team with Malcolm Marshall and Gordon Greenidge.  The games were of a
much higher quality than we see today.  The idea that removing overseas
players from the county game would improve english cricket is a farce.
County Cricket seems to exist as a job creation scheme for mediocre
cricketers.  9 english players playing with 2 top class overseas stars
would teach young players far more than the limp fare served up today.

Finally if overseas come to England and "learn our conditions" - why
aren't English players, growing up in England the best in the world in
these conditions.

sorry about the rant but I went to Lords last week and met a load of
reactionaries.

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says...

Speaking as an outsider, I can't believe that with all the conflict over
improving the standard of the competition in England they didn't increase the
number of overseas players. It seems to me that if you bring over more better
bowlers and better batsmen from overseas the local players will naturally get
more practice against higher quality competition, thereby improving their
standard as well.
Shit, it's not as if any talented English players are going to miss out.

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Dockers for Premiers 99. Only 7 wins in a row to go.
       'Estimating crowd numbers is always a little difficult
        in India. It's usually done by working out how many
        tickets have been sold and multiplying this figure
        by thirty'
                                    Warwick Todd.
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This is absolutey spot on. At the moment far too many county players are
simply not good enough, there are too many of them and it is too easy to
earn a living in county cricket. We must either reduce the number of sides
so that competition for places is tougher, or increase the quality by having
more overseas players - so what if another ordinary seamer/late order
batsmen doesn't get a place?

Personally i'd rather see half the sides. But i think in the UK we are too
stuck in the past for this to ever happen.