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Record IPL fee Stokes fears that cricket is turning into soccer

Roar Rookie
20th February, 2017
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Is Ben Stokes really the greatest allrounder in the world? (AP Photo/Tim Ireland)
Roar Rookie
20th February, 2017
16

It is difficult to embrace the idea that cricket could turn away from the ideals of ‘love of the game’ and all of that, but this is exactly what’s starting to happen with the continued rise of global Twenty20 competitions.

After Ben Stokes was sold in the IPL 2017 auction for a staggering $AUD2.8 million, I had a number of questions.

Is that an acceptable amount of money for a player yet to reach his peak on the international stage? Are players from more countries going to follow the West Indians’ lead and abandon Tests for the IPL? Are we entering a soccer-like scenario where inflated fees are paid for players as a matter of course?

It is the last two questions that trouble me the most. As has been well-publicised since the inception of the Indian Premier League as the first big-name international T20 competition, the money available has seen a flood of West Indian players abandoning Test and other international duties in favour of a yearly pay day in India.

The shame of no longer seeing the likes of Chris Gayle, Darren Sammy, Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell in the whites is felt most dearly within the West Indian setup, where they have been enduring a lean period in terms of results and a politically-charged standoff over the money available to Test players.

The idea that this could occur in more Test-playing nations is scary, but very real. I look to the newer Test nations like Afghanistan, who had several players sell well in the auction – if their players realise they can extract large fees from the IPL and grow their own name rather than commit to Test cricket, then we could well see the loss of what Afghan cricket has so wonderfully gained in the last few years.

We are also seeing the rise of T20 specialists, the best example being English fast bowler Tymal Mills, who himself exceeded the original biggest fee paid for an overseas player before this year in the auction. A talented player who deserves exposure, no doubt, but a shame that the out-and-out fast bowler England has been searching for for years is limited to T20 cricket.

Call me a purist, but I have always considered Test cricket to be the ultimate honour, and why most players would get into the game as kids. However, I now suspect that the better coverage and financial opportunities available with T20 competitions will leave us in a scenario of players hunting money over pride.

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Speaking of money, I come now to my second concern – the inexorable rise of player fees. Stokes has bags of potential, and has started to show his skills to their best over the last six months or so. But he is not the finished article, and he hasn’t proven himself in T20 at international level to be worth that kind of money compared to other players around.

The logical conclusion must be that are we reaching a scenario where, like the worrying trend in soccer, teams are prepared to overpay for players.

I liked the IPL auction concept originally, but I fear it may be part of the problem. Desirable T20 players like Stokes are in fierce demand for their batting and bowling versatility, but surely the auction concept encourages overpayment and possibly then overburdening on the guy?

These inflated player fees will bring with them an added sense of expectation, and maybe that is not needed to help the best possible development of young cricketers.

These two problems are not separated by any means – the excessive fees available to above-average cricketers as a result of the money-spinning in the IPL or the Big Bash League in Australia will do nothing to ease the perceived decline of Test cricket, a scenario which is detrimental to the game worldwide.

Here’s a damning thought to leave this on – in the first IPL player auction, the spending cap for each franchise was $US5 million. In 2017, Stokes’ figure approached half of that figure, and Rising Pune Supergiants can still afford to put a whole team together under the new cap.

Money talks, and if something is not done to reinvigorate Test cricket or improve the central contracts available to Test players in all nations, we may see a lot more Chris Gayles slip through the net.

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