No I am not talking about a team comprised of Manchester born Yorkshire players with dodgy knees and a wonderful cover drive, but headlines in the Daily Telegraph saying "Michael Vaughan calls for all-English England"seem to suggest that Vaughan has been wearing out his copy of Mein Kampf.
Vaughan makes a differentiation between Kevin Pietersen and the most recent South African born players to play for England; namely Jonathan Trott and Craig Kieswetter. He argues that "someone like Kevin Pietersen made the decision very early to come over to England and he learnt a lot of his cricket here" whilst Trott and Kieswetter both represented the South African under-19 side. I get the impression that Vaughan is not keen on Trott; who in his ghost-written autobiography claims he saw celebrating with the South Africans at Edgbaston after they had beaten England in what proved to be Vaughan's last game as skipper.
I wonder if the distinction he makes with KP is convenient given that Vaughan lavishes praise on Pietersen in the same book; admitting that he couldn't wait to get him in the side for the Ashes in 2005 following his spectacular introduction in the one-dayers in South Africa. Kieswetter too came to England early, even spending time at Millfield and has been at Somerset since he was 19, so I am not sure that Vaughan's argument washes here.
Where would Vaughan stop? Well his preference that he would like to see "in an ideal world, 11 complete Englishmen in the team" suggests that Andrew Strauss, Matt Prior and certainly Eoin Morgan would not make the cut either.
Vaughan is right to suggest that some of the South Africans coming to England do so to make money. But one can hardly blame them for that. Globalisation and the ensuing removal of restrictions to allow freer movement of labour means that this trend is set to continue. The ECB couldn't legislate against it even if they wanted to, because the UK is part of Europe and has to adhere to the labour laws of the EU.
I don't know the forum in which Vaughan made these comments and whether they have been taken out of context by the Daily Telegraph, who let's face it are probably keen to see an all English population in England, but I am surprised that someone as erudite as Vaughan has put himself in danger of being misconstrued. Nick Griffin will be lapping it up.
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