The end of the Kolpak deals, as a result of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, is expected to benefit South African cricket a lot as it will not only bring some much needed experience and talent into their domestic circuit but will also offer a vast pool of resources to the national team which is currently in rebuilding phase.
Over the years, South African cricket has experienced a huge dearth of talent and experience as a lot of their players had been lured away by English counties through the Kolpak route. The lucrative offer put forward by them was hard to be turned down and that’s why a number of Protea players had taken this route despite enjoying success at the highest level of South African cricket.
Now that this is coming to an end, the newly appointed CSA Director of Cricket, Graeme Smith, said that they are ready to welcome everyone who wants to be a part of the domestic circuit.
Spinner Simon Harmer, pacers Kyle Abbott and Duane Olivier, and batsman Rilee Rossouw are some of the South African names who were part of these Kolpak deals.
“With Kolpak coming to an end, I guess the willingness is always to have our best players in the system,” Smith told reporters via a video conference.
“It is up to the players to come back into the system and to make decisions on their careers.
“From our perspective, we want to encourage all our best players to play here domestically, and then give themselves the opportunity to be selected for the national side.”
Dane Paterson, who joined Nottinghamshire last month, was the 45th South African player to take the Kolpak route and he would probably be the last one of them too provided that the UK is expected to make its exit from the EU by December this year.
“We don’t ever want to exclude players from being part of our system and we understand that the landscape of the world game is very different now to what it was,” Smith continued.
“Open minds and how we look at these things is going to be key to how we keep our best players. How we keep them motivated and in our game.”