England Cricket Team - Eligibility of Players

Eligibility of Players

The England cricket team represents England and Wales. However, under ICC regulations, players can qualify to play for a country by nationality, place of birth or residence, so (as with any national sports team) some people are eligible to play for more than one team. ECB regulations state that to play for England, a player must be a British or Irish citizen, and have either been born in England or Wales, or have lived in England or Wales for the last four years. This has led to players of many other nationalities becoming eligible to play for England. ICC regulations allow cricketers who represent associate (i.e. non-Test-playing) nations to switch to a Test-playing nation, provided nationality requirements are fulfilled. In recent years, this has seen Irish internationals Ed Joyce and Eoin Morgan switch to represent England, whilst Gavin Hamilton previously played for Scotland – though four years after his last appearance for England, he became eligible to play for Scotland again.

Of the current squad (see above), Craig Kieswetter, Matt Prior, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Strauss and Jonathan Trott are all South-African-born but qualify through British parentage (though they still had to fulfil residency requirements), Jade Dernbach and Stuart Meaker have British citizenship having lived in England since their youth, whilst Eoin Morgan is an Irish citizen.