Cricket is the only professional team sport I can think of where the top players play more international (representative) matches than they play for their “club”.
Is there any other professional team sport in the world where this is the case?
Maybe fieldhockey and rugby come close, I do know they play a lot of international matches.
Definitely not Rugby League.
Rugby Union players play a lot of internationals, but I just checked the stats of John Eales (famous Australian Rugby player), and he played way more games for his club than he did for Australia, by a factor of about 4.
Field hockey I wouldn’t know about, would be interesting if a hockey fan could offer some useful information there.
I wonder what it is about cricket that makes it one of (if not the only) professional team sport in the world where the top players play almost exclusively international representative matches?
Eh? Most of the top players play in the English Top40 League… which is apparently turning into the Premier League this year.
Hockey players play more club than internationals.
Club cricket is played only over the summer (more or less). The international matches are on at the same time as the club games. If you’ve been selected for your national team you are unavailable for your club. Remember the international games can be up to five days long, so there’s not a lot of scope for including a club game in between, even without considering the training sessions for the national side.
Edited to add: I’m mainly talking from an Australian perspective here.
With Union it depends what you want to count as club & international games.
With the Super 12/14 competition you would find that most Australian, New Zealand & South African players play very little for their ‘official’ local club side. Instead playing the majority of their games for their Super 14 team. Whether you consider Super 14 a club comp or not.
Maybe the common thread there is having three tiered competition structures.
I.E.
1st Tier - Club Comp
2nd Tier - Region/State based comp (Sheffield Shield & Pura Cup for Cricket, Super 14 for Union in the Southern Hemisphere)
3rd Tier - Internationals