Counties will be increasingly discerning in issuing No-Objection Certificates (NOCs) to their players as the number of franchise leagues "encroaching" on the English summer grows. That is the view of Daryl Mitchell, the interim chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA) which represents the interests of English players.
The number of overseas leagues clashing with the English summer has grown significantly in the last five years. English players have featured in leagues in India, Sri Lanka, the US, the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands and Zimbabwe this year, while a late start to the Pakistan Super League (PSL) will add to the logjam next season.
Fourteen English players made appearances in PSL 2024, including white-ball specialists Sam Billings, Alex Hales and David Willey who are all likely to return in 2025. But other players will not be available, with the tournament running parallel to the IPL for the first time, and with counties reluctant for their players to miss the start of the season.
Liam Dawson, who has featured in five PSL seasons, will not play in the tournament next year. "I'll be playing for Hampshire at that time," Dawson said at Tuesday night's cinch PCA awards, where he was named men's player of the year primarily for his performances in the County Championship.
Alec Stewart, Surrey's departing director of cricket, told the Telegraph on Wednesday that the ECB should take the lead. "Money talks, and if they are earning five times what they earn at our place, their heads will get turned," Stewart said. "We need the ECB to stand firm on this and not say, 'It's up to the counties', and to bring in regulations."
As things stand, counties have the power to withhold or withdraw NOCs for players who are not centrally contracted - as Surrey did earlier this year, to pull Jamie Overton out of the PSL. But others believe that if they do not meet players' demands in the middle, then they will lose them altogether - either to other counties, or to the franchise circuit.
"The global landscape and how things are shifting there is obviously pretty important to our members - or at least, the top 20% of our membership, who go around playing global tournaments," Mitchell said. "NOCs are always on the agenda as well, and how that's going to look moving forwards.
"It's a challenge, isn't it? That's something we are going to have to work through. It's a bit too early to say what that will look like by the time we get to April next year. The challenges are there. Obviously there's a lot of tournaments that encroach onto our season now, and we have to work through that, possibly on an individual basis, to see how that aligns."
Daniel Gidney, the Lancashire chief executive, said last month that NOCs and standard county contracts have been "diluted" over the last decade and criticised player agents, saying they "don't care" about the Championship. Mitchell said he was "confused" by the criticism: "Some of that didn't actually make sense, particularly around the NOCs."
Instead, Mitchell predicted that counties will increasingly look to wield their power to ensure that the best English players are available throughout the season, rather than skipping Championship games in order to play overseas.
"At the moment, they've got the right to [deny NOCs] within the summer months - and actually, for some of the smaller competitions in the winter as well… They probably haven't used their rights as much as they could have done, which is obviously to the benefit of some players when they do go away.
"It's up to the counties, and their discretion… The global landscape is shifting so quickly and the game, players, counties, the ECB - we have to evolve with it and try to find the best fit that works for everyone."
Mitchell said that the PCA's other main focus during the English winter will be lobbying on the players' behalf in a bid to resolve the long-running debate around the domestic schedule, with an ambitious aim to have a plan in place for the 2026 season by the start of next summer. "The debate needs to start pretty quickly, in truth," Mitchell said.
"Counties ideally would like to know exactly what they're playing for. If there are going to be any structural changes come 2026, they want to know what they're playing for in '25, I would imagine. It's really challenging. There's loads of moving parts in there, and ultimately, the counties will decide what they want the structure of the county season to look like."
Recent changes to the IPL's regulations are likely to encourage a swathe of English players to enter the mega-auction for the league's 2025 season. Where, previously, players have been able to pick and choose whether they will enter a certain season, the BCCI have now stipulated that a failure to register for a mega-auction will make that overseas player ineligible for the following season too.