By Matthew Fisher
Striking the balance between things such as the Indian Premier League and county cricket is a very tricky situation for England players like Liam Plunkett and David Willey.
Personally, I don’t think the players should be blamed when they choose the former, as has happened with these two Yorkshire lads.
I’m very close to Dave – he’s a very good friend of mine – and to see how much hard work he puts in at Yorkshire, he does it to play for England and be knocking the door down of competitions such as the IPL.
As a sportsman, you are always trying to get to the peak of where you can be – that’s international cricket.
For me, at the moment, my focus is getting into the first team at Yorkshire and being consistent. But theirs is to play for England, and I don’t think anyone should question that.
There’s no more coverage in world cricket than at the IPL, it’s even more watched than international cricket I would imagine.
For any cricketer, it’s an aspiration to play in the IPL, and the way England are going in limited overs cricket now, they want them playing in that because they want them under pressure. The more games in which that happens, it’s better for England.
With them looking towards the 2019 World Cup and winning it at home, opportunities such as this are positives for player and country.
I have seen quite a lot of stuff on Twitter about Dave, we all read it as players, and it’s not nice to see. You know, things like ‘He’s only doing it for the money’ or ‘He doesn’t want to play red ball’.
I know Dave really well, and I can tell you it’s not about the money. It’s an added bonus, of course, but he wants to be in a team who wins the World Cup for England for the first time. And this is going to help him to do that.
I’m absolutely sure it’s the same situation with Liam.
He wants to play red ball, he wants to play for Yorkshire and give 100 percent. Just because he got the call, it doesn’t mean any of the above is untrue. It’s just that his main focus at the minute is playing for England, and that outweighs Yorkshire unfortunately.
