England name central contracts list
The list of centrally-contracted England players for 2007 will be:
- I Bell
- P Collingwood
- A Cook
- A Giles
- A Flintoff
- S Harmison
- M Hoggard
- S Jones
- K Pietersen
- M Panesar
- A Strauss
- M Trescothick
- M Vaughan
Monty Panesar and Alastair Cook are both new additions to the list, with Geraint Jones missing out. The question marks ultimately concern Giles, Vaughan and Simon Jones, since both have been out of any form of cricket for the best of a year. It obviously demonstrates how much faith the England selectors have in these players. Personally I think it’s a little short-sighted, nay, dangerous, but any of those three ever regain full fitness then you’d expect them to be England side shoe-ins anyway, so the worst it can be is a very expensive mistake for the ECB - the contract can be worth up to £250,000 per player.
It seems like a reasonably fair list, none of the more recent additions to the team have done enough to yet merit a contract, and Chris Read was unlikely to get issued the contract in favour of Geraint Jones having only been in place for a couple of games. No doubt their respective performances down under this Winter will determine whether Summer contracts are awarded.
Tags: central-contracts, England, michael-vaughan, monty-panesar, The-AshesRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Cricket
1 opinion for England name central contracts list
harrowdrive
Sep 21, 2006 at 11:47 am
I feel a bit sorry for the selectors. Whoever they pick, they are going to be criticised: “No keeper under contract? AN OUTRAGE!”, “injured players getting paid millions? DISGRACEFUL”
ANd if they had gone for Plunkett, Mahmood or any other fringe player they would have been accused of abandoning our great Ashes winners.
Still, overall it seems like a sensible selection to me. Apart from perhaps Simon Jones.
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