N-Overseas, please. Will cricket fans ever be satisfied?

It recently came to my attention that people were tired, fed up - whatever it may be - with the number of non-English players in county cricket. It seems that people love to complain about, well, pretty much anything. 

Even if their side wins matches, that person will say that 'we couldn't have done it were it not for foreign imports.' That person would also rather be flirting with defeat every week, as long as he or she could sleep happy, knowing that every member of the squad was born within a ten-mile radius of their home ground.

The fact of the matter is that foreign imports, overseas or kolpak players make county cricket more exciting and diversify the game in a way that could not happen if each county was bounded by the ECB to field a team comprising only of English players. Using Derbyshire, whose captain (Wayne Madsen) was born in New Zealand as an example, we can see that overseas players play a huge role in the English game.

I should make it clear that my intention is not to put a numeric value on the importance of overseas players, but instead to make it abundantly clear that no one county should be able to complain that 'local talent' is being sacrificed because of pesky Zimbabwean's.

At any one time this season, Derbyshire could have up to four people in their team who were born outside of England. Madsen, Tilikaratne Dilshan, Chesney Hughes and Natahan Rimmington - sounds like the makings of a formidable twenty20 side, if you ask me. But, wait, we forgot about John Smith who was born a few miles down the road. Sorry, Mr. Dilshan, we want to win and everything, but we might upset the fan base by not playing John.

In the last seven days, Middlesex announced the signing of Kyle Abbott for the shortest form of the game and did so with no thought or regard for all of those players in the second eleven; they want to win cricket matches, just like every other team. If that means hiring short-term replacements, so be it.

Yorkshire are an example, they are the pinnacle of a counties ability to produce such talented players, most of whom now occupy a role with the England side, forcing the White Rose to include such second-team players. They are fortunate to have a plethora of talented youngsters, that is not to say that other counties don't, but timing is crucial and I refuse to believe that Yorkshire will find it as easy to win the title this season, given the impact that their success last year has had on the availability of their best players.

Ask any Yorkshire supporter, would they rather win the title with Cheteshwar Pujara, or come third with Jack Leaning and Andrew Hodd, any honest person would say they prefer the first option.

Perhaps people have lost perspective, but more than a handful of non-English - again, in terms of where a person was born - players have played a significant role in the International side in recent years. Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Strauss, Jonathan Trott, Matt Prior. I could go on.

Does it truly matter if you are born in England?

I therefore urge you, the county cricket fan, to ask yourself if you are truly bothered by the identity of the player who scored that match-winning century or the bowler who ripped through a side all by himself, if the end result is a win for the team you support. Is it merely in the nature of a cricket fan to have a defeatist attitude at every turn, or are we truly happier losing with a team of local lads?

If you thought your county was overcrowded with players born outside of England and Wales, then the following statistics may come as a bit of a shock. Similarly, some people may not have realised just how much of their squad is made up of players who were born outside of England and Wales...

County players born outside of England and Wales:

Derbyshire (6): Hashim Amla, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Martin Guptill, Chesney Hughes, Wayne Madsen, Nathan Rimmington

Durham (6): Peter Chase, John Hastings, Keaton Jennings, Calum MacLeod, Michael Richardson, Ben Stokes

Essex (5): Jesse Ryder, Tanveer Sikandar, Greg Smith, Shaun Tait, Ryan ten Doeschate

Glamorgan (6): Chris Cooke, Michael Hogan, Colin Ingram, Craig Meschede, Jacques Rudolph, Ruaidhri Smith

Gloucestershire (7): James Fuller, Peter Handscomb, Geraint Jones, Michael Klinger, Hamish Marshall, Kieran Noema-Barnett, Gareth Roderick

Hampshire (6): Yasir Arafat, Gareth Berg, Jackson Bird, Fidel Edwards, Sean Ervine, Owais Shah

Kent (2): Mitchell Claydon, Brendan Nash

Lancashire (6): James Faulkner, Paul Horton, Kyle Jarvis, Alviro Petersen, Ashwell Prince, Peter Siddle

Siddle has played county cricket for Nottinghamshire
and Lancashire in the last two seasons.

Leicestershire (6): Mark Cosgrove, Grant Elliott, Clint McKay, Angus Robson, Niall O'Brien, Kevin O’Brien

Middlesex (13): Kyle Abbott, Andrew Balbirnie, Joe Burns, Nick Compton, Neil Dexter, Stephen Eskinazi, James Franklin, Ryan Higgins, Eoin Morgan, Ollie Rayner, Sam Robson, Paul Striling, Adam Voges

Northamptonshire (7): Shahid Afridi, Muhammad Azharullah, Maurice Chambers, Kyle Coetzer, Steven Crook, Rory Kleinveldt, Richard Levi

Nottinghamshire (6): Ben Hilfenhaus, Michael Lumb, Vernon Philander, Brendan Taylor, Darren Sammy, Riki Wessels

Somerset (12): Jim Allenby, Corey Anderson, Tom Cooper, Josh Davey, George Dockrell, Chris Gayle, Tim Groenewald, Craig Kieswetter, Johann Myburgh, Abdur Rehman, Sohail Tanvir, Alfonso Thomas

Surrey (11): Tom Curran, Jade Dernbach, Moises Henriques, Azhar Mahmood, Stuart Meaker, Kevin Pietersen, Jason Roy, Kumar Sangakkara, Vikram Solanki, Gary Wilson

Sussex (9): George Bailey, Mahela Jayawardene, Chris Jordan, Ed Joyce, Craig Cachopa Steve Magoffin, Matt Prior, Michael Rippon, Ashar Zaidi

Warwickshire (9): Tim Ambrose, Jamie Atkinson, Freddie Coleman, Recordo Gordon, Sam Hain, Brendon McCullum, Jeetan Patel, William Porterfield, Jonathan Trott

Worcestershire (4): Saeed Ajmal, Alex Kerverzee, Colin Munro, Sachithra Senanayake

Yorkshire (4): Gary Ballance, Glenn Maxwell, Cheteshwar Pujara, Kane Williamson

Do overseas signings harm county
cricket, or enhance the quality of the English game?