The Home Office defines a professional sportsperson as someone who is “currently providing services as a sportsperson, playing or coaching in any capacity, at a professional or semi-professional level of sport”. Seems pretty straightforward, right?

However, they also define a professional sportsperson as someone who is “currently registered to a professional or semi-professional sports team, or who has been so registered within the previous four years. This includes all academy and development team age-groups.”

This is where things start to get confusing. Under this ruling, a player who played representative cricket for a state side (or equivalent) three years ago, and hasn’t played at that level since, would only be allowed to play club cricket in the UK this summer, at any level, after obtaining an International Sportsperson visa – a visa they basically do not qualify for.

“If there’s a lad who is 22 who played for New South Wales under-19s three-and-a-half years ago, he can’t play cricket in England,” says James Cole, director and senior cricket agent at CricX – The Cricket Exchange Agency.

And things get more complicated. Another Home Office definition of a professional sportsperson is someone who “has represented their nation or national team within the previous two years, including all youth and development age-groups from under-17s upwards”. This includes players who have represented Associate nations, very few of whom play at an elite level. This, in theory, would block a player who turned out for, say, Thailand or Kenya at under-19 level in 2023 from playing club cricket in the sixth tier of the Essex League in 2025; unless they have a professional’s visa.

The Home Office also defines a professional sportsperson as someone who “has represented their state or regional team within the previous two years, including all youth and development age-groups from under-17s upwards”. This again is problematic.

The aforementioned definitions are hurting UK club cricket and blocking aspiring young players across the world from furthering their careers in this country. They are effectively making it impossible for certain players to come here and play cricket.

Founded in 2004, CricX specialises in arranging club, county and gap year placements for cricketers in the UK and Australasia, as well as franchise gigs at tournaments around the globe. While there hasn’t been an overall decrease in the number of players CricX has facilitated in coming to the UK for club stints since the Home Office’s regulatory changes took effect in January 2022, there has been a shift in the type of player being signed up.

“The visa regulations have made it a lot harder for young, aspiring pathway cricketers,” Cole tells WCM. “If you’ve played state under17s, -19s or second XI cricket in the last four years, you are classed as being on a player pathway. Being on a player pathway means you are classed as being a professional cricketer, and to come to the UK you have to come on a professional visa; and to come on a professional visa, you have to have played a certain amount of first-class or List-A games.”

For someone to obtain an International Sportsperson visa to play club/non-first-class cricket in the UK they are required to have played a minimum of five first-class matches, and/or to have played international cricket – including at under-19s level – at any point up to 24 months prior to their application. They can also qualify if they’ve played a minimum of 20 List-A or T20 matches in an ICC Full Member country during that period. In short, it means that players who, in the words of Cole, are “a million miles away from being a professional cricketer”, are effectively being locked out of UK club cricket.

“A lot of the clubs that we deal with want your aspiring first-grade player that’s playing state under-19s cricket or has done recently, but unfortunately because of the visa regulations, it’s preventing them coming to the UK unless they’ve got a British passport, an ancestral visa or an Irish passport.”

As a result, the standard of overseas imports at a lot of clubs who aren’t willing or can’t afford to shell out for a seasoned pro is declining and impacting the overall quality of league cricket as a result.

“What you’re finding is that clubs will still want that sort of young Aussie, Kiwi, South African profile of player, but because of the visa regulations they’re going to get the next level down potentially,” says Cole. “It’s not affecting the numbers [of overseas players coming to the UK], but it might affect the standard of amateur cricketers that clubs can get.”

Clubs who still want a top overseas player are now often opting for more experienced cricketers as opposed to young prospects, which in itself presents a range of challenges.

“Because of the amount of professional cricket and franchise cricket going on in other countries, to get an overseas player that can play 18 to 22 league games is quite hard,” says Cole. “Most Australian professionals are going home in the first or second week of August; the South Africans are probably quite similar. The Indians generally leave the back end of August. Sri Lankans and Zimbabweans are the cricketers that you’re probably going to get for as close to a full season as you can. It’s very rare that you’re going to get an overseas professional that’s still playing professionally and get them for a full season.”

Signing an overseas player is an expensive commitment and with a smaller supply of young cricketers available to come to the UK to play club cricket, the amount of money that clubs are spending is going up.

“On the International Sportsperson visa, clubs are providing the airfare, accommodation costs and have to pay a minimum of £200 per week in line with the national minimum wage,” says Cole. “That £200 per week can go up to £300 a week, £400 a week, £500 a week, £600 a week for the right player.

“A lot of players of a certain standard also want to travel with their family, and clubs have to provide accommodation for a couple or a player with young children, which limits options. A lot of these clubs would rather go down the young Aussie grade-player route, but because they can’t do that due to visa regulations, they’re getting stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

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In August 2024, Timothy Abraham of the BBC reported a crackdown on overseas amateur cricketers – many of whom were in the UK on Visitor/Student visas – following an audit of the ECB’s player registration database.

Around 1,700 players were flagged, with many found to have potentially breached their visa conditions by playing and/or coaching. This investigation into “professional” players playing on the wrong visa resulted in some overseas recruits being banned from turning out for their clubs at a crucial point in the season, with the ECB also passing a list of names over to the Home Office for review.

An ECB spokesperson told the BBC: “As a governing body we are expected to maintain immigration compliance within the sport, so registered players from the recreational game are captured within the annual audit. These are players who are not normally resident in the UK and will be here under various entry permissions.

“As these are immigration rules, the ECB has no power to ‘clear’ a player. We have a duty to report any breaches or potential immigration breaches to the Home Office, and would contact the club to make them aware and explain why.”

As clubs mull over the possibility of recruiting an overseas player for the coming season, they could be forgiven for deciding it’s not worth the trouble. Stringent and complex regulations aligned with rising costs have made the hunt less appealing and rewarding than it once was, removing a little star dust from the club game in the process.

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While recruiting overseas players to the UK has become increasingly tricky, cricketers from the UK can easily play in places like Australia on various types of visa, regardless of their previous cricketing level or experience.

“In Australia in particular, there are no real overseas player rules,” says Cole of CricX. “It’s based on points systems. We regularly place two, three or four lads at the same club in Australia and they can all play in the same side. If you’ve got seven homegrown players all
worth zero points, it gives you more flexibility to do that. We’ve probably got five or six clubs in Melbourne that take seven or eight overseas players per year for each club.”

CricX is placing almost as many players in Australia as they are in the UK, ranging from lower-league club players right up to first-class level.

“There’s massive scope for it and Melbourne is the most popular destination just because there are so many cricket clubs there – there’s probably 20-25 leagues in Melbourne alone. Players of all standards go over there and have a great time. They just make it really accessible for players to come over and play cricket. What we don’t want to happen is for Cricket Australia to start introducing rules like the Home Office have done.

“Unfortunately, the Home Office seem to be digging their heels in and preventing people that can come over here and work legally from playing amateur sport. You can’t even coach legally. If you want to come over and work for Wisden for two years, for example, you can do that, but you can’t play cricket for Wimbledon Cricket Club. I don’t understand it.”