Aussie cricketers offered multi-year contracts to forgo IPL. File Pic[/caption]Internet Desk: In a bid to make top Australian players forgo the Indian Premier League, Cricket Australia (CA) has offered a contract to their key players in an attempt to convince them to stay away from the cash-rich league for the next three-years.
The offer comes in the shape of multi-year central contracts, said the Sydney Morning Herald which reports that Pat Howard, CA's Executive General Manager of team performance, made the approaches at a time when the governing body and the Australian Cricketers' Association are in dispute over a new pay deal for the players.
CA wants to keep the players fresh during their off days in April and May when the IPL is played and insisted that there is nothing "sinister" behind the move.
As per the reports, Test captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and fast bowlers Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins were contacted individually in recent weeks with verbal offers of three-year deals rather than standard one-year central contracts on the condition that they sit out the IPL.
The report, however, added that the offers were met with lukewarm responses from the players. “The terms of the multi-year deals discussed informally with Howard were regarded by the players as underwhelming, with the only perceived incentive for them missing the IPL being the security of a three-year contract,” the report said.
It is believed that if CA had to succeed in its move, it has to come up with big financial compensation to wrest international players away from the IPL, since Steve Smith and David Warner, who captain their IPL franchises, collect more than $1 million a year for the Twenty20 tournament and their earning capacity there is set to rise sharply with a bumper new IPL broadcast deal tipped to see the event's player payment pool double.collect more than $1 million a year.
Warner, for example, is arguably now the most valuable foreigner in the league, having led Sunrisers Hyderabad to the title last year and blasted his way to the top of this year's IPL run-scorer's list over the past six weeks.
The second-ranked player in CA's 2017-18 contract list behind Smith, the Australian opener's retainer with CA is estimated to be worth $2 million but he could conceivably earn as much as $10 million in the IPL alone over the next three years.
Starc, who left Royal Challengers Bangalore before this year's IPL to focus on the Champions Trophy in June in England, could also command upwards of $3 million a year from a new team under an inflated payment pool. England all-rounder Ben Stokes was bought for $2.8 million by Smith's Rising Pune Supergiants at auction this year.
CA says the move is aimed at minimising injuries and avoid the controversial resting of players such as Smith in Sri Lanka and Starc and Hazlewood in South Africa last year.
With inputs from PTI.
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