Kolpak: Selling your soul or buying your freedom?

“It’s there, it’s lucrative and people can do it. So they will." - Justin Kemp on Kolpak.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in London

WHY have 43 South Africans taken up Kolpak contracts since 2004, thus turning their backs on the supposed pinnacle of playing international cricket?

Because, no matter how much artificially flavoured patriotism it’s drenched in, you can’t eat a Proteas badge — which is also no good for helping Eskom keep the lights on, nor for making South Africa’s increasingly febrile political and social realities seem fit for human purpose.

But don’t expect South African to agree, especially those who look to sport to ease the load of dealing with those realities.

As Ryan McLaren said: “If you’re a chartered accountant and you get an offer to go and work for a bank in New York, everyone says it’s a great opportunity. But if you’re a cricketer and that happens everyone says you’re stabbing your country in the back.”

Justin Kemp concurred: “It’s there, it’s lucrative and people can do it. So they will.

"Players are well looked after in South Africa, but to go and play county cricket for five or six years and have the option of getting a British passport are attractive options."

Morné Morkel took up that theme on Cricket Australia’s website: “[Cricket South Africa] have to sit down and come up with plans because they're going to lose a lot of players in the near future and they need to protect against that.”

Faf du Plessis joined the refrain talking to reporters in Johannesburg yesterday: “It’s a problem that CSA will face; not because of what they’re doing wrong themselves. We need to put in structures to keep our players otherwise we potentially will lose more.”

Duanne Olivier became the latest back-stabbing opportunist this week when he signed a three-year Kolpak contract with Yorkshire reportedly worth R2.7-million for each of its three years; rather more than the R900 000-a-year, two-year deal CSA apparently counter-offered.

“Brace yourself — he’s not going to be the last one to do it,” Kemp said.

The news hit cricketminded South Africans hard, not least because Olivier took 24 wickets against Pakistan in January. The seven he claimed against Sri Lanka last month helped him break into the top 20 ranked bowlers in the world.

“I want guys to be the best they can be internationally because that’s the legacy that you leave — your international career,” Du Plessis said. “I’m very disappointed that he didn’t live out the expectation I had for him.”

Kemp went Kolpak for Kent in 2008, at 30 and months after he knew he had played his last game for South Africa. Morkel announced his international retirement in February after a stellar career, and is now on Surrey’s Kolpak books.

McLaren signed a Kolpak deal, also with Kent, in 2007 because “I was seventh or eighth in the [South Africa] queue, behind [Jacques] Kallis, [Shaun] Pollock …”. He returned to the fold two years later to play 66 white-ball internationals and two tests.

Olivier’s situation is different. He is 26 and has played in all five of South Africa’s home tests this season. So he would seem to have a successful international career within his grasp.

“Questions will be asked when you’re in the test team and you still pack your bags,” Kemp said. “I would have found it very difficult to leave if I was a first-choice player, but every circumstance is different.

“Players are well looked after in South Africa, but to go and play county cricket for five or six years and have the option of getting a British passport are attractive options.”

And not only for the white players who are invariably cast as victims of South Africa’s transformation policies who resort to a Kolpak future: six of those 43 South Africans have been black.

In Olivier’s case, despite his current form he couldn’t be sure of staying in the international mix what with rivals for his place of the calibre Lungi Ngidi coming back from injury. Indeed, of South Africa’s 25 tests since Olivier made his debut, he featured in only 10.

“We look at the last month or two and we go, ‘How can you sign Kolpak? You’re playing and you’re doing well’,” Du Plessis said. “But I think his decision was made a lot sooner than that.

“What unfolded over the summer was great for him but by then he was already, without us knowing it, halfway committed [to Yorkshire].”

Actually, it goes back further. Olivier took 31 wickets in seven first-class games as an overseas pro for Derbyshire last winter.

When he returned, his Knights teammates — McLaren included — “could see there was something different: the ball was coming out of his hand much better and he was bowling much better”.

In the five tests before Olivier went to Derbyshire he took 17 wickets at 23.12. In the five he played after his stint there he took 31 at 17.13.

English cricket helped make Olivier the bowler he is. Maybe they deserve a piece of him. Now they have it.

What is Kolpak?

The European Court of Justice ruled in May 2003 that the German Handball Association’s rule preventing TSV Ostringen from picking Maroš Kolpak — a goalkeeper from Slovakia living and working in Germany — fell foul of the law.

Slovakia was not then a member of the European Union (EU), and German teams weren’t allowed to field more than two players from outside the bloc.

But Slovakia did at the time have an Association Agreement with the EU. That, the court decided, was enough to give players from countries like Slovakia the same rights as citizens of EU states to play for clubs in the EU.

In June 2000, South Africa was among 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific nations to sign the Cotonou Agreement with the EU, which bestowed on the people of the former the same right Kolpak had won to be between the sticks for Ostringen.

That enabled counties to sign players from those 78 countries without filling the limited quota for overseas professionals.

Forty-three South Africans, six Bajans, five Zimbabweans, three Jamaicans, two New Zealanders and one each from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have taken up the offer.