The England and Wales Cricket Board has successfully lobbied the Home Office to close the legal loophole that allowed Riki Wessels to join Nottinghamshire last week.
In a landmark case the son of the former Australia and South Africa batsman Kepler Wessels became the first cricketer to secure a Tier 1 Entrepreneur Visa, which effectively allowed him to bypass the ECB's tighter guidelines on signing non-qualified players. But the 25-year-old, on a two-year contract at Trent Bridge, will also be the last, following confirmation that as of this month the obscure visas no longer apply to sport.
While the ECB recognised Wessels's lawful right to work in the UK and endorsed his registration, it immediately wrote to the Home Office to express concern that its bid to limit imports to elite players had been compromised. It was agreed that the system was open to misuse. "That is why this government has changed the rules to prevent it from happening again," said the immigration minister Damian Green. "Sports people are no longer eligible for entrepreneur visas and have to apply through the appropriate routes, through the points-based system.
"They will not be granted a visa unless they have been properly endorsed by their respective governing body."
Wessels had been a victim of the clampdown on Kolpak players in February 2010, when his six-year spell with Northamptonshire was terminated on a technicality. Despite his long service at Wantage Road, he had only been on a working visa for three years, having arrived as a teenager on a working-holiday visa – the ECB's revised minimum requirement was four.
He would have returned to Kolpak status last December via marriage to a British woman but the wedding was called off; his determination to resume his county career took him down the entrepreneurial route. Applicants must set up their own company to trade in the UK, show £200,000 in a bank account, and employ at least two people to qualify. Wessels contracts himself as a player and has hired someone to run his personal website.
