How strange that rugby and cricket contracts should be published almost by the same post!
But cricket still manages to mystify the most. Seventeen names are listed, but divided into 2 and 1- year groups.
They look like this:
Two-year central contracts
Lauren Bell (Hampshire), Charlie Dean (Somerset), Sophie Ecclestone (Lancashire), Amy Jones (The Blaze), Heather Knight (Somerset), Nat Sciver-Brunt (The Blaze), Danni Wyatt-Hodge (Surrey) (7)
One-year central contracts
Tammy Beaumont (The Blaze), Maia Bouchier (Hampshire), Alice Capsey (Surrey), Kate Cross (Lancashire), Sophia Dunkley (Surrey), Lauren Filer (Durham), Mahika Gaur (Lancashire), Danielle Gibson (Somerset), Sarah Glenn (The Blaze), Freya Kemp (Hampshire) (10)
If you can spot the dividing line between the two, you’re a lot more intelligent than me. Why do Tammy Beaumont and Sarah Glenn not make it into the first group? Glenn ranks third in the world in T20s; Beaumont hardly needs recommending.
Why the need to separate at all?
It’s almost as if the ECB can’t afford employing all 17 on the same terms. Recent performances in South Africa have been largely ignored. It will be interesting to see how many of the second group Jon Lewis chooses for the test match starting on Sunday..
The addition of a smaller group (skills/development contracts) –
Bess Heath (Durham), Ryana MacDonald-Gay (Surrey), Issy Wong (Warwickshire)
– makes more sense, but serves only to add a second dividing line between players who might well feel they should be grouped together, not kept apart.
And of course the players are allocated to their new counties, plus the one that refuses to carry a county name. So the coaching teams who brought players to this degree of excellence are cast to the four winds.
The whole business of contracts is fraught with risk. A bit of history: Yorkshire CCC, for many years the most reactionary of all the counties, used to offer its (male) players at best a one-year contract. In the end they found themselves losing their most valued properties. For example, the then England captain, Ray Illingworth, went off to lead unfashionable Leicestershire, where they promptly became county champions.
Yet lessons aren’t learned. What sort of security does a player have on a one-year contract? Even a player with as distinguished a career as Tammy Beaumont is demeaned by an administration that doesn’t seem to know what it is doing, even what it is attempting to achieve.
Views from elsewhere
If you glance at the BBC’s HYS (Have Your Say), you’ll find an astonishing number of enthusiasts offering their opinions, with an equally astonishing unanimity of views.
They don’t read well for the head coach or the captain. I have failed to find one comment among many hundreds offering solace to Lewis. Most suggest: “Off with his head!”
