COUNTERVIEW | Put country first

West Indies' cricket team coach John Dyson was clearly irked, and rightly so, at the late arrival in England of his side's captain, Chris Gayle, for the start of a Test series against the home team. Gayle only landed in England two days before the first Test because he was busy representing the Kolkata Knight Riders in the second edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), now taking place in South Africa.With England team director Andy Flower also admitting that his team is short on practice because surprise they were playing in the IPL, it is clear that there is soon going to be a clash of interests between the clubs these players are on and the countries they represent.
The services of star players are a perennial bone of contention between football clubs and country teams, with coaches of national sides rather bitter about the privileges their club counterparts get. They allege that the national teams are but poor relations to the clubs and players put their club commitments over national ones. Do we really want a situation where this happens in cricket?
It isn't just that players juggling various obligations will hamper the preparations of national teams, a la Gayle. Frenetic schedules will also see them injuring themselves to the detriment of the national side. Andrew Flintoff, a key member in the English team, will be out of commission for his country's series against the Windies due to an injury he picked up at the IPL. There are doubts over Zaheer Khan's fitness for the T20 World Cup. With only a little over 10 days between the end of the IPL and the start of the T20 World Cup, the players who do make it through without dropping out with injuries will be so exhausted that the tournament will probably be a wash. The Australians decided not to compete in the IPL because they knew it would hurt the national side. Such hard decisions will have to be made by all teams or cricket may find itself at a crossroads where international fixtures become poor bridesmaids to club contests.VIEW | The two need not clash