Surrey's overseas recruitment is a betrayal of England cricket

THE recruitment to county cricket of overseas stars such as former Australian captain Ricky Ponting is a blow for English players.

Ricky Ponting

IT almost always comes down to ambition. When Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, signed for Surrey in November, that ambition was stated explicitly - "When you consider the ambition shown, it was an easy decision for myself and my family," he said - and when Ricky Ponting signed on the dotted line for the same county, it was implicit: an ambitious move by the most ambitious club in England.

After all, there was, until Smith's unfortunate ankle injury spoilt things, the possibility that, one summer's evening in July, Ponting, Smith and Kevin Pietersen would don the brown cap and go forward together, three musketeers wielding their flashing blades, laying waste to some toiling Twenty20 bowlers. It would be, one newspaper said, salivating over the prospect, the greatest collection of stars in a county side since Somerset fielded Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Joel Garner.

Except, what kind of ambition have Surrey really shown by bringing together a team that could consist of those three great players, all acquired from elsewhere, alongside a host of other imports? They have shown that they have got the biggest chequebook in England, underpinned by a long-term staging agreement and a commercial department that runs things with panache; they have a superb ground in mint condition that would be attractive to anybody with a sense of history and style; and they are enviably situated, a draw card for any player who fancies a stimulating time in one of the greatest cities of the world.

It is ambition of a kind, I suppose. But a far healthier and more rewarding ambition, and one that is incumbent on a club of Surrey's size, history and stature in the English game, is to produce a home-grown team, and if they can win things with such a team, even better.

This, after all, is one of the greatest clubs in England, along with Yorkshire, Warwickshire, Lancashire and Middlesex. These clubs have wonderful history and traditions, but more than that they have resources unmatched by other counties.

And by resources I mean resources of the most important kind: young cricketing talent. The big five have the manpower, they are situated within giant urban sprawls, they have the strongest youth systems and they have the oldest and strongest cricketing leagues on their doorstep. If they cannot produce their own first-class cricketers, who can?

Surrey will argue, as county clubs who cannot produce their own players in sufficient numbers always argue, that great overseas players, such as Smith and Ponting, are a positive influence on the dressing room. It is a reasonable assumption, given the quality and reputation of the players we are talking about, albeit one that is unquantifiable. (There were hardly legions of Somerset cricketers knocking down the England door in the generation that followed Botham, Richards and Garner.)

As the desperately sad details that emerged from the inquest into the tragic death of Tom Maynard suggested, the Surrey dressing room was in need of some guidance.

Nobody is against the judicious signing of a great overseas player to complement a largely home-grown staff. That, surely, is the balance that all clubs would like to see, although for the less powerful clubs, such as Derbyshire and Northamptonshire, among others, it will always be a struggle to produce an entirely home-grown team.

The history of the County Championship is in no small part the history of the acceptance of overseas players who have done so much to further the game. So, taken in isolation, the signing of Smith or Ponting can hardly be criticised.

But look beyond the particular to the general trend of Surrey's past few years and you will see a club who have gone out of their way to poach talent from elsewhere. It is a betrayal of what county clubs should be about, a betrayal of the youth systems that cost so much time, money and energy, and dispense such hope to a generation of players seeking to follow in the footsteps of home-grown international players, of whom Surrey have produced many.

Many of these imported players were on show at Chelmsford on Monday evening, when Surrey, patently short on confidence, were given a mauling by Essex: Ponting, Azhar Mahmood, Vikram Solanki, Gary Keedy, Jon Lewis, Zander de Bruyn, Steven Davies and Gary Wilson - eight imported players, to complement Jason Roy, Tom Jewell and Stuart Meaker, three products of the Surrey system. Gareth Batty, another import, was there but not playing because he was injured.

Of course, there are other good young Surrey players who were not on view, such as Zafar Ansari, who will progress into a fine cricketer once his studies are done, Matthew Dunn, a fast bowler of distinct promise, and Rory Burns, who has had a good start to the season.

Equally, there were a few other imports not on show as well, such as Chris Tremlett and Pietersen, to say nothing of Jacques Rudolph, Pragyan Ojha, Dirk Nannes and Murali Kartik, each of whom has played cricket for Surrey at some stage in the past two years.

The ratio of imports to home-produced players on the professional staff (about 50:50, by my reckoning) is surely not good enough for a club of Surrey's ambition.

Against this argument, some will point to football clubs and the transfer market, and argue that the days of clubs relying on a local production line have gone. But the reasoning is flawed, given that county cricket does not pay its way and cannot attract large enough numbers through the turnstiles to watch. Until that day comes, the primary role of a county club is to produce future top-class players from within its own boundaries.

There is a feeling among those at Surrey that the club are treated unfairly in the media, that even when they were highly successful with a largely home-grown team (Alec Stewart, Graham Thorpe, Mark Butcher, Martin Bicknell et al), there were still those who found reason to carp about their so-called swagger. Maybe there is a grain of truth in that; maybe that comes with the territory of being part of one of England's biggest clubs.

For myself, the issue is not with Surrey but the very point of county cricket and the lavish resources spent on youth programs that have to have some reason for existing.

When Lancashire pursued a similar policy of trying to import success for a few years, I was equally critical. When they won the County Championship two years ago with a largely home-produced side, the champagne would have tasted sweeter, knowing the grapes had been produced from home-grown vines. Last year's most heartwarming story was Derbyshire's success on the back of a deliberate policy to eschew imports in favour of young Derbyshire players.

Ponting may sparkle this summer and Surrey may yet be successful; they may even win a trophy or two, although things will have to improve rapidly. But even if they do, the garlands can wait until the day they do it with a largely home-grown team. For any county club, that is an ambition worth striving for.

The Times