A major row has broken out in English cricket, with T20 freelancers claiming they have been caught off guard by a new ECB policy on No Objection Certificates (NOC). Players have called for an emergency meeting next week as they discuss the implications of the changes which ECB chief executive Richard Gould says are designed to “protect the integrity of our sport”.
A group of England’s top independent T20 professionals – players without national contracts who have exclusive white-ball deals with their counties – feel the move is designed to restrict their opportunities, and a handful of them are said to have reacted angrily to the new policy. They are discussing their options both with the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) and among themselves in a WhatsApp group chat.
These could include a legal challenge, citing trade restrictions. “The PCA’s legal team is currently completing a thorough review of the implementation of the policy,” Daryl Mitchell, interim chief executive of the PCA, told ESPNcricinfo. “The PCA continues to obtain considered opinions and possible consequences of this policy from players and player representatives.”
Next year, the Pakistan Super League (PSL) has changed its usual dates and will be held in April-May, coinciding with the opening months of the County Championship season. The ECB’s move is designed to prevent a significant drain of talent away from English domestic competitions, and players on standard contracts across all county formats will not receive NOCs to play in the PSL.
Most significantly, the ECB’s new approach will be to deny NOCs to any league that overlaps with the T20 Blast or Hundred on the grounds that granting them could “compromise the predictability, stability and consistency of ECB competitions”.
The move would affect players like Jason Roy and Alex Hales, who skipped parts of Blast in 2024 to appear in MLC and LPL respectively. A UK-based player agent told ESPNcricinfo: “The problem is that everything clashes with Blast, because it’s so long.”
The IPL will retain its atypical status, with the ECB continuing to issue NOCs to English players unless they are centrally contracted and have their workload managed. Twelve English players were signed in last weekend’s mega-auction, including two (Moeen Ali and Jamie Overton) without any form of contract with the ECB, while others could still sign replacement deals.
Several players who were not sold at the auction, such as Adil Rashid and Tymal Mills, or who did not register, such as David Willey and Dawid Malan, could play in the PSL, although players are awaiting details on the recruitment process for the season. 2025. These could be determined at an upcoming meeting in early December.
Players without a contract with England must have an NOC signed by both their main national teams and the ECB. Under the new policy, the ECB will not grant an NOC if it has “any concern that the [relevant] “A foreign tournament poses or may pose a risk from a corruption perspective, or may put… the integrity of the game at risk.”
Gould said: “There has never been a better time to be a cricketer, with more opportunities than ever for players to compete in competitions around the world and be well paid for it. But we must protect the integrity of our sport and the strength. of our competitions in England and Wales too.
“This policy provides clarity to professional players and counties on our approach to issuing No Objection Certificates. It will allow us to strike the right balance between supporting players who wish to take advantage of opportunities to earn and gain experience, while protecting the integrity of cricket at a global level, ensuring we do not undermine our own ECB competitions and managing the welfare of centrally contracted English players.”
There is also concern that several actors will seek to renegotiate their county contracts as an unintended consequence of the new policy. Some players may consider moving from all-format deals to white-ball deals that contain a “pay-per-play” red-ball element, similar to those signed by Luke Wood and Saqib Mahmood at Lancashire.
Matt Roller is assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
