Nick Skinner unravels the ICC’s eligibility criteria and their impact on Associate cricket for Emerging Cricket
“There are few lazier cliches about Associate cricket than the derisive portrayals of teams stacked with expats and mercenaries (surely the “plucky amateurs happy to be here” trope is its only serious competition in the hackneyed commentary stakes). It’s a complaint that is often based on little more than a superficial glance at the names on the team sheet – Hong Kong’s men are often victims of this, with the vast majority of the side products of the domestic youth scene despite their largely non-Chinese backgrounds, while Denmark fields a team almost entirely composed of native Danes (some of whom are of subcontinental extraction), but the perception is difficult to shake, largely because there is indeed a kernel of truth to it. Despite frequent commitments from emerging nations to developing “native” players, they are largely drowned out by antics such as Canada replacing homegrown skipper Nitish Kumar with South African ring-in Davy Jacobs, before he’d even played a game for them”
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