AN OVERHEARD conversation at Guildford between several members of the Warwickshire team during their recent match against Surrey has led Mike Edwards, the former Surrey batsman and director of cricket development at the Oval, to start a campaign against the proliferation of non-English players in county cricket. The players were communicating in Afrikaans.

In all, 31 Australian Test and state players and 60 “overseas” players will have been registered by the 18 counties this season. Edwards has had enough. In a letter to David Morgan, the chairman of the ECB, and circulated to influential officials, he says: “We are faced with the absurd spectacle of county coaches jostling for position in the arrivals hall at Heathrow to pick up the latest recruit. Is it such a good idea to give so many Australians an extended net in English conditions in the year before an Ashes series?”

Edwards, highly respected by all involved with youth cricket in Surrey, has demanded action from senior members of the ECB. He does more, however, than draw renewed attention to the culture of quick fixes favoured by county coaches, despite all the time and expense invested in cricket development in England and Wales, including a comprehensive network of development officers, county academies and the national indoor cricket centre at Loughborough.

He proposes a five-point plan: restrict the number of official overseas players to one per county; increase the amount of time required to gain residential qualification; return to a single-division county championship to prevent “knee-jerk” recruitment; distribute central money according to how many England-qualified players are contracted by a county; and tighten the regulations that apply to qualification for England. The last two ideas have been discussed, but no action has been taken by an ECB management board that seems petrified by the prospect of legal repercussions.

The present regulations restrict counties to two overseas players at any one time, although they can be replaced in the event of international calls. Any European Union passport-holder can be classed as domestic as long as he is an “overseas” player in his home country. Sven Koenig, the Middlesex opener and a South African, is one of many who qualifies by way of a European passport, in his case Italian, and Andy Flower and his newly signed brother, Grant, the Essex and former Zimbabwe players, qualify by having British passports.

To qualify for England as opposed to a county, foreign players such as they must complete five years’ residency in the UK. As a result, Stuart Law and Craig Spearman, respectively of Australia and New Zealand, become eligible to play for England next year.

The situation has been exacerbated by the trading regulations that have allowed almost anyone to walk into professional cricket in England under the Kolpak ruling. Maros Kolpak, a Slovakian handball player, won the right in a European Court to play in Germany without being classed as a foreigner, claiming restraint of trade. Claude Henderson, of Leicestershire, a South African, came into English cricket by this route.

The paradox is that such signings are the product of the cut-throat competition in the county game that many felt was required as a preparation for Test cricket. The frantic search for championship points drives counties to pay for seasoned cricketers rather than take risks with their own produce.