By IANS
London : The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is reported to have held a meeting with its South African counterpart here to discuss a solution to the growing problem of the number of Kolpak players in county cricket.
The get-together, on the sidelines of the International Cricket Council (ICC) executive board meeting last week, follows hot on the heels of the memo to all county chairmen advising that the ECB was clamping down on registrations and insisting they ensure that all Kolpak players had the correct work permits.
Friday's newspapers here claimed that the two boards discussed two possible ways to tackle the problem.
One was to make it harder for players to represent another national team after they had represented their country in age-group tournaments.
The other was a tightening of permit regulations, so that players would necessarily have played a certain number of first-class matches – possibly as many as 50 – before being allowed to play first-class cricket in England.
Whichever route the boards want to take, they will need to persuade the ICC of the merits of any action. The ICC executive board needs seven votes out of the ten members to pass the motion.
Although a fortnight ago Haroon Lorgat, South Africa's head of selectors, publicly endorsed South African players using the Kolpak loophole to play in England, it is believed that the boards are as worried about the player drain as the ECB is at the number of players currently in county cricket.
The straw that broke the camel's back was Warwickshire's signing of Vaughn van Jaarsveld, who turned his back on South Africa after not being picked for the national side as quickly as he wanted. That brought home to the South African board the danger of home-grown talent being allowed to drain away.
As for van Jaarsveld, the future is uncertain. He signed for Warwickshire three weeks ago professing that his aim was "to play for England". It now seems he might struggle even to play for his county. He is still waiting to be granted a work permit, and that has already been turned down as he has not played in England in the previous two seasons.
Warwickshire are looking at exploiting another loophole, which might allow him to play 20 hours of county cricket per week.
It may well be that just as the name Kolpak became famous for changing the face of county cricket the name van Jaarsveld may indicate a new watershed.
The Kolpak ruling was handed down by the European Court of Justice on May 8, 2003.
Maros Kolpak, a Slovakian handball player, was released from his German club because of a quota on non-European Union players, imposed by the Deutscher Handballbund (German Handball Federation). He claimed this was unfair and the case went all the way to the European Court, which ruled in his favour.
At the time of the ruling Kolpak was not from the EU but from a country with an associate trading relationship. So the Court of Justice's findings meant that any player from any nation, which had such a relationship with the EU could also freely play as a professional.
The main cricket-playing countries with associate trading relationships with the EU include South Africa, Zimbabwe and several in the Caribbean, and the county game has seen an influx of cricketers since 2004, especially from South Africa, under the Kolpak ruling.
Initially, the ECB said that no Kolpak player could have represented his own country in the previous 12 months, but that was found to be unenforcable when Yorkshire signed Jacques Rudolph early in 2007.
The ECB now penalises counties whereby for every game that a side fields a Kolpak player, they get 1100 pounds deducted from their annual central handout.