Gale dissatisfied with handling of Starc’s visa issue – Cricket News Update
Yorkshire captain http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mitchell-Aaron-Starc-c76392, who recently traveled to UK to join the club but was deported owing to visa issues.
The 22-year-old was due to play for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Yorkshire-c867, but upon his arrival at Heathrow Airport in London, was detained for nearly four hours. He was later allowed to travel up North, but the Border Agency ruled that his visa documentation was incomplete, for which
reason he would need to return to Australia to complete the paperwork.
“You’d think that commonsense would prevail,” Gale said. “You’ve got an elite sportsman who’s not trying to do the system and yet he’s got to go all the way round the world to sort out the problem. Why couldn’t they have sorted it out from this end instead
of him travelling?”
“Even if they’d said to him ‘you can’t work or anything until this has been sorted’, surely it stops the lad going on a long flight and then coming all the way back? It’s a nightmare from his point of view and a nightmare from ours.”
Starc’s agent, Andrew Fraser, also expressed similar concerns, and pointed a finger at the UK Border Agency, for their unreasonable request that the Aussie bowler travel halfway across the globe in order to fill a form. He did, however, confirm that instead
of flying all the way back to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746, Starc had stopped off in Kuala Lumpur, and attempts were being made to resolve the issue.
The left-armer had originally been expected to debut in Yorkshire’s LV= County Championship Division Two match against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Gloucestershire-c785 (which was delayed due to rain), but Gale clarified that while the pacer was supposed to travel with the team, he was not
scheduled to play in the match, and would have undergone training in order to enable him to make an appearance in the match against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Hampshire-c789 in the coming weeks.
He also went on to claim that the club had “bent over backwards to accommodate the player”, and expected to retain the bowler for as long as he wasn’t needed by Australia. For this reason, he explained that Yorkshire were determined to see the situation
through.
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