Wednesday, May 21, 2008

No Salary cap in IPL is no good

Offer of a 4 mn contract to Peterson is already doing its round and at the same time we are hearing that there might not be any Salary Cap for the players in IPL from Next season onwards. For the first season, a franchise could spend only 5 mn dollar at the max on its players. Dhoni turned out to be the costliest T20 dude followed by the biggie Andrew Symonds.IPL Teams

Obviously, cricket in its T20 form in general and IPL in particular is all about economics and making money. No one can deny that and no one can question that. It is only going to get bigger with players getting salaries to the tune of millions of dollars for a few months. Why this is an area of concern?

  1. It has already been a success with the Salary cap in place. First edition of IPL has already seen a fierce competition. After all what is the need to change it?
  2. Without no salary cap, a team like Bangalore, if the frustration of its owner is anything to go by, would try to buy many big players at any money. A few other franchisee would also do the same and it would then turn out to be who has got the Money power and it would no longer be about the cricket players. A franchise spending more money would become a stronger team. Won't this make things boring? Don't we still want T20 to be a cricket game? Or we as spectator just want to see this as a dollar game?
  3. So much money in quick time is no good for cricketers either. It would challenge the national loyalty of the players because why would someone not want to earn 10 times the money what he would earn playing for his country? Also in a double quick time?
  4. Because of point three, many international teams might lose many players. Ricky ponting has time and again raised this concern. New Zealand has already lost so many to ICL. Now many players might stop playing for their countries and would prefer just to play in the IPL. After all IPL would last only for about 2 months. They can chill out with their families and friends in the remaining months of the year. With no designated window carved out for IPL from the international calender, this seems to be a close possibility. The international teams would be affected and obviously ICC's vision is not aligned to this development. What about spreading it to different countries?

I am afaird of the following consequences in the years to come:

  1. Cricket might be run only by such franchises and ICC would become a defunct organization or would exist just for the sake of it.
  2. All other forms of cricket, Test, ODIs etc would be scrapped and we would only see T20s.
  3. No international matches to be played and it would only be domestic tournament, cricket's NBA? A team from Bangalore or Delhi might be declared the world champions of cricket soon.
  4. And many more things, we never dreamt of.

Good luck purists.

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