Graeme Smith wishes to have Kolpak players back to South African system 

The Kolpak route to county cricket is about to close as UK leaves the European Union.

As the Kolpak route to county cricket nears close with the UK leaving the European Union, Cricket South Africa (CSA) director of cricket, Graeme Smith, said he would love to have players who have turned their backs on the national domestic scene reconsider their stance.  

South African cricket has had a massive talent exodus in the last couple of years, with a weakening rand and a strict racial quota policy, making cricketers, especially white South Africans, look elsewhere with regards to their career choices. 

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"With Kolpak coming to an end, I guess the willingness is always to have our best players in the system,” Smith told reporters via a video conference.

"It is up to the players to come back into the system and to make decisions on their careers."

"From our perspective, we want to encourage all our best players to play here domestically, and then give themselves the opportunity to be selected for the national side."

The Kolpak route is available for citizens of the 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries whose governments are party to the Cotonou agreement with the European Union. 

The arrangement also makes citizens of 105 countries - the remaining 27 in the EU and the 78 Cotonou signatories - English with regards to their eligibility to turn up in county cricket. 

However, this is set to change at the end of the year, when UK's transition period out of EU culminates on December 31.

"We don’t ever want to exclude players from being part of our system and we understand that the landscape of the world game is very different now to what it was," Smith said. 

"Open minds and how we look at these things is going to be key to how we keep our best players. How we keep them motivated and in our game."

In last five years, South African domestic scene has lost players of the quality of off-spinner Simon Harmer, seamers Duane Olivier and Kyle Abbott, and batsman Rilee Rossouw to Kolpak deals in county cricket. 

Recently, fast bowler Dane Paterson, who played in two tests against England in January, became the 45th South African to go down that path, signing up with Nottinghamshire. 

The word 'Kolpak' is borne out of the name of Maros Kolpak, a Slovak handball player. Maros in 2000 claimed restraint of trade and won a European court ruling which allowed him to play in Germany, with Slovakia becoming a part of the European Union. 

In County Championship, this allows English counties to play more than two overseas players that the ECB permits a team to field in a first-class XI. 

(Inputs from Reuters)