Do Cricketers Play for Pride or Country?

A question I often hear and wonder about myself. Do cricketers play for pride or country? Or is it purely financial if you look at competitions like the Champions League T20 and the IPL. What ever happened during that rebel series the ICL?

Kevin Pietersen and Johnathan Trott might be the latest internationals to play for a different country to that of their birth, but does that have to be a negative? I have looked into some recent statistics as found on the Cricinfo website.

In recent memory it seems to have been only the South Africa Teams who have been breaking rank and heading to the home of their ancestors. Allan Lamb was one of the earlier pioneers, during the era of apartheid, that decided that with his English heritage, he might be good enough to play cricket for England. Had he stayed in the Cape Province, he might never have played a test. Others with the same motivation, were players like Robin Smith and Kepler Wessels. Kepler Wessels had gone a slightly different route, playing 24 tests for Australia, before returning to captain South Africa after the apartheid exile. He played a further 16 tests for South Africa before retiring after an eventful tour of England. All in all Kepler ended with an average of over 40 in test batting, and scored a century on debut for Australia. It might also be added that the better half of his career was played for Australia, but some of this could be put down to the pressures of taking on captaincy of a side desperate to impress in the last 16.

Other than South African player leaving the shores for England and Australia, there has also been players like Robin Singh, who was born in Trinidad and played a lot of domestic cricket there before moving to India where his story differs dramatically. He only played one test match for India, which was nine years after his ODI debut. He played 136 ODIs with one century and nine fifties. His highest score in Test cricket (which to be fair, was extremely limited) was 15. 

What I find interesting about the player mentioned is that players like Robin Singh, was not a bad player, yet ended with average records. But I remember him being involved in many match-winning partnerships and he certainly played a lot of matches for somebody with a one day average of 25-odd. Players like Allan Lamb and Robin Smith wanted to compete at the highest level and didn’t really have much to loose. Kepler Wessels however was doing wonderfully and broke into the Australian test scene when it was very difficult to do so. But he returned to South Africa when the nation called and delivered a lower average, but much more gritty innings.

During the most recent Ashes campaign Trott along captain Strauss (also South African born, but he learned his trade in England from a young age) built the partnership that won the Ashes. Granted Australia wasn’t as good as they would have been with a Brett Lee to bowl some in-swinging yorkers to the batsman on debut, but yet he showed a quite determination to fight for runs. Albeit this might have been for selfish motivations, like getting into a struggling batting line-up with some good results up front. He also left South Africa with a whimper.

Kevin Pietersen had a terrible attitude when he left South Africa and was not the best player in contention for the provincial spot. He was kept out by a young Asian (only relevant due to the quota system in South Africa) player, by the name of Gulam Bodi. Pietersen’s own loud opinion was that he was the better player and his book pointed out that Bodi hadn’t achieved a lot since. This on paper is curios as he has played two ODIs for South Africa against Zimbabwe in August of 2007 and averaged 41-odd. Why then has he played no other matches? A bit of bad timing of injuries, when he was picked as the batting-spinner option for the tour of the West Indies and he was ruled out with a broken finger on the eve of departure.

But all of that is slightly off the point. Pietersen pulled his act together and learned some discipline with the help of strong captaincy and a desire to succeed. Would he ever consider pulling a Kepler Wessels and returning to South Africa if he was offered the Captaincy? Heavens knows.

I think – and this is just an opinion – that cricketers play for the love of the game. Competing at the top with the best is what motivates them. The IPL throws a lot of money at a lot of players, but the players that do the best are the ones out to prove a point. The young Indian talent and the older warriors with tags of “too slow” for T20 cricket, like Kallis and Dravid out perform the highly paid who haven’t figured out that you cannot play for money when you’re up against hunger. Even the old Australian players, like Warne and Gilchrest must have realised this by now.