England will face weakened Scotland in T20 World Cup opener as part of alarming wider trend

Associate teams are well aware of this reality. If they insisted that counties release all their players for the World Cup, many players would be forced to choose between playing international cricket and their more lucrative county contracts. When Paul van Meekeren missed playing for Netherlands in last year’s ODI World Cup qualifiers to play for Gloucestershire, he told ESPNcricinfo that if the board had insisted that he played: “I’d retire from Dutch cricket.”

“Players choose counties because they provide greater financial security compared to an Associate nation contract,” one leading agent explains. “You can’t opt for that security and then want the other benefits of international cricket.”

For less-resourced nations, this reality is nothing new. On West Indies’s tour of England in 1933, their star Learie Constantine played in only one of the three Tests: his Lancashire League side would not allow him to play in the other two. “Nelson had key games and wouldn’t release me; I should have gone fast enough if I could,” Constantine wrote.

Last year, Scotland and Netherlands entered depleted sides in the qualifiers for the ODI World Cup, rendering the Dutch toppling West Indies to win a place in India even more remarkable. In 2022, when England toured Netherlands, the hosts were missing the equivalent of half of their full-strength team. At least one member of the England management at the time was privately irked with counties, who had rendered the games less competitive by not releasing players.

“We need enough money to contract our players full-time – then we can release them to counties or provincial teams but we are in charge,” observed the Netherlands coach in 2018. “The team that they are playing for very often uses the whole selection or contract negotiations as a threat.”

Those were the words of Ryan Campbell, who is now Durham head coach. Then, he was lamenting counties not releasing their Netherlands players. Now, he will benefit from Ackermann playing during the T20 World Cup; when he joined Durham, Ackermann made clear that he would be available throughout the summer. But Durham have released Michael Jones to Scotland and Bas de Leede to Netherlands.