Matthew Engel’s insightful historical analysis of cricket in post-apartheid South Africa rightly highlights that social class, not race, “is the main determinant of opportunity” and that South Africa “hardly provides fewer chances than exist in England” (35 years since the rebel tour. What has changed?, 20 May).
However, in identifying the main routes into the English team, including private education and family connections, he fails to recognise the positive contribution of league cricket. For example, virtually every Yorkshire player, including those who have made the Test side, from Len Hutton to Adil Rashid, has appeared for a league team. And league cricket has also been at the vanguard of women’s and disability cricket.
As regards the “South African” route into the English game, accelerated by concerns that Brexit will end Kolpak status, Engel also neglects to add that this has negative consequences for both South African and English cricket: for the former it weakens their first-class game and future coaching resources, and for the latter, in the context of some counties fielding over half a team of Kolpak players, it greatly reduces opportunities for younger players – the least privileged from the leagues – to “make it” in the first-class game.
Mike Stein
Pudsey, West Yorkshire
• Matthew Engel is a fine cricket journalist with sound social and political principles, but I must take issue with one of the statements in his otherwise good article. He asserts that “there are now only three well-trodden routes into the [England] national team: through independent schools, existing cricketing families and, all too often, South Africa”.
This is just not a fair statement of the facts. Take my home county of Durham. In recent years they have produced a steady stream of England players: Paul Collingwood, Steve Harmison, Graham Onions, Liam Plunkett, Scott Borthwick, Ben Stokes and Mark Wood. All of these cricketers attended state schools, were not from high-profile existing cricketing families, and had no connection with South Africa.
But then perhaps if some of those attributes had applied, and certainly if they had been in south-east England, perhaps they would not have been kicked in the teeth so disgracefully by the monsters of the ECB.
Over to you, Matthew.
Steve Smart
Malvern, Worcestershire
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