Cheap club players to step in for absent Hundred stars

A NUMBER of counties are planning to recruit club cricketers on short-term contracts that will not pay the sport’s minimum wage due to concerns about losing players to The Hundred next summer.

Sportsmail revealed on Saturday that appearances in the 50-over competition will not be included in the performancebased criteria used to determine if players receive the minimum £27,500 salary negotiated by the players’ union. A desire by counties to bolster their squads during The Hundred is the main reason for this exclusion. All 18 first-class counties will receive a handout of £1.3million from the ECB for releasing players to the eight Hundred franchises — as well as a rebate of around 12 per cent of each player’s salary — but there are still concerns that the new competition will have a negative impact on their seasons. With the vast majority of players expected to enter next month’s auction, the leading counties fear they could be without as many as eight or nine players when The Hundred takes place next July and August, leaving them short of players for the One-Day Cup, which will run at the same time. As a result many counties plan to play club cricketers alongside youngsters in what the ECB have admitted will become a ‘development competition’. But they are reluctant to pay these short-term recruits the minimum wage. If One-Day Cup matches were part of the PCA agreement, the counties would be forced to pay £27,500 to relatively inexperienced players for just four weeks’ work. The anticipated influx of club players will be another blow to domestic 50-over cricket, the format in which England were crowned world champions for the first time in July.