Modi forecasts IPL players to earn $1m a game

English cricket plans new 100-balls-a-side tournament

LONDON, April 19, (AFP): Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi believes there will come a time when players will earn $1 million dollars per game while warning that the traditional programme of matches between countries “will disappear”.

A Twenty20 domestic franchise competition launched a decade ago, which has spawned a host of imitators worldwide, the IPL is now the most lucrative of all cricket tournaments.

“The IPL is here to stay,” Modi told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in an interview published Thursday. “It will be the dominant sporting league in the world.”

IPL teams are bankrolled by wealthy businessmen operating in an environment where the passion for cricket in India, the world’s second-most populous nation, makes the game an attractive target for sponsors and broadcasters.

At present there is a team salary cap, with the likes of England all-rounder Ben Stokes earning $1.95 million per season from the Rajasthan Royals.

But Modi believes that if that $12 million cap is relaxed, leading IPL players could earn as much as English Premier League footballers and even NFL stars.

That would have a huge impact on international cricket, with players torn between making an IPL fortune and representing their countries.

“You will see players making $1$2m a game,” said Modi. “It will happen sooner rather than later.

“In a free market the person with the deepest pockets will win. The players will gravitate towards who pays the biggest salary.”

Meanwhile, in a chilling argument for cricket traditionalists, Londonbased Modi forecast the end of country versus country contests, which effectively finance professional cricket structures all round the world and the demise of the International Cricket Council, the sport’s global governing body.

“Today international cricket does not matter,” he said. “It is of zero value to the Indian fan.

“Tomorrow you will see bilateral cricket disappear,” Modi added. “Big series will happen once every three or four years like the World Cup.

“The ICC will become an irrelevant body. It will be full of fat lugs who have no power. They can scream and shout now and in the future they will threaten to throw India out if they try to expand the IPL but India has the power to stand on its own feet ... They have a domestic league that it is going to be 20-times the size of international

Modi

cricket.”

Modi said the only way five-day international Test cricket, long regarded as the pinnacle of the sport, could survive was if the ICC introduced a long talked-about championship.

“I think there is a window for Test cricket and a World Test championship will survive if all nations get together and make it a proper tournament,” he explained.

“But it has to be a championship. If the ICC does not do it I see no reason why the IPL would not do it instead as a knockout IPL Test championship.”

Modi left India to live in London

CRICKET

and has not returned home since 2009. The Board of Control for Cricket in India found him guilty of eight offences relating to irregularities in the administration of the IPL.

He has never been charged by the Indian government with a crime and denies all accusations, but Modi has repeatedly insisted he cannot go back to India because of underworld threats to his life.

The England and Wales Cricket Board have proposed a 100-balls-aside format for a new domestic competition that will start in 2020.

It had been thought that the eight team men’s and women’s competitions, due to involve city-based sides rather than the traditional 18 firstclass counties, would have a standard 20-overs per side format.

But English men’s county cricket, which pioneered the 20-over game as a professional format, already has the Twenty20 Blast, while the Women’s Super League is also a 20 overs per side competition.

Instead, in a bid to make the new tournament “distinct”, the ECB has now opted for an unproven format that would, if adopted, differentiate the event from existing Twenty20 franchise competitions such as the Indian Premier League and the Caribbean Premier League, which both currently cut across the English season.

An ECB statement issued Thursday said the competitions would take place in a five-week block in the middle of the season.

Cricket South Africa (CSA) and the country’s cricketers appeared to be headed for conflict on Thursday, just 11 days before the expiry of a fouryear agreement between officials and players.

The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) issued a statement on Thursday which contradicted one put out by CSA on Wednesday.

The official body claimed that it was seeking as a matter of urgency to conclude a new five-year memorandum of agreement (MOU) with the players.