Can bowl, will travel

The continuing saga of Lee Daggett's career continues, much I'm sure to his frustration. Released by Warwickshire earlier this month he was originally told that the club would help to facilitate a move to another county.

Unfortunately for him the first county to show and interest was Warwickshire's local, and divisional rival's Leicestershire. The dispute centres on who should pay Daggett's wages for the time he is on trial with Leicestershire. Normal practise is for the county taking the player to pay 1/6 of their annual wage, however with Daggett out of contract this has become a sticking point. Leicestershire are insisting they should be able to play Daggett in their first team without any contribution towards his salary, meanwhile Warwickshire are refusing to release him to play for their divisional rivals, whilst paying his wages.

None of the parties appear willing to budge on the issue and this led to the extraordinary intervention from Lee Daggett's mum yesterday, who offered to pay off the remainder of his salary to resolve the impasse.

To further complicate matters, and perhaps explain the situation, the two counties had recently fallen out somewhat when Giles criticised the profusion of kolpak players in county cricket. David Smith, Leicestershire CE seemed to take the comments personally and responded with;

"Yet again I have to question the hypocrisy of Ashley Giles. and his comments," he told Cricinfo at the time. "Warwickshire have Trott ,Botha, Groenewald, Zondenki, Carter, all born in South Africa, Ambrose born in Australia and a South African coach in Donald.

"I would suggest Ashley focuses on the huge job he has to do at Warwickshire rather that tell other counties how to run their businesses and the make of their staffs."

Then following the recent impasse over Daggett he issued a staggering personal attack on Giles;

"I have to except that Ashley has just made the transition from the dressing room to director of cricket and at this stage has very little management experience. The only way common sense could have prevailed was if a more senior, experienced manager at the club had become involved in looking at the issues behind this loan proposal.

“I have a massive job to do here and have no intention of telling Warwickshire how to run their club. I would, however, point out that with over 20 years’ experience of the club in both a playing and committee capacity, this would never have been allowed to happen in the more successful eras at this once-great club.

“I will not be falling out with anyone at the club. I consider myself very fortunate to have had such a lengthy and happy involvement at Warwickshire. We simply move on.”

It is surprising that such an "experienced" manager felt the need to indulge in such a public display of pique. A quick and unscientific google search reveals 13,600 hits for "David Smith Leicestershire idiot" and 2,740 for "Ashley Giles Warwickshire idiot", which I think tells its own story.

My personal view, which may not be popular is that all three parties here have shown a lack of imagination and flexibility in resolving this issue.

If Daggett's only concern is his future career and he backs himself to find and impress another county, then surely Warwickshire and he could have come to some arrangement where the remainder of his salary until 30th September was reduced or not paid. As Warwickshire's only objection seems to be 'paying him' to play for Leicestershire.

Equally if Leicestershire are serious about him then surely they could have come to some arrangement where he only played in 2nd XI cricket as a trial, or played in only a single match (at Warwickshire's expense) as a "try before you buy" trial.

As for Warwickshire surely they could have looked to impose restrictions on any loan, if Leicestershire were unwilling to pay Daggett's salary then perhaps Warwickshire could have retained some kind of veto over his appearances. In order to prevent him playing against them, or playing in the unlikely event Leicestershire start to threaten Warwickshire's position in either league.

The really surprising thing here is that to an unenlightened outsider there does seem to be room for manoeuvre and compromise here which suggests a lack of will to do so.

Lastly I'm not sure Daggett-gate is strictly the right term to describe it (Sorry George). I'm not a fan of "gates" purely for the reason that their profusion would mean that strictly history should be rewritten to call the Nixon scandal, "Watergate-gate". I think a better moniker would be something that shows the tug of love between two parties wanting to take custody of a child who is unsure of the love of either. Hence I will be referring to it as "The Curious Incident of the Daggett in the Night-time", after the popular book by Mark Haddon.