T20 crisis hits stars in pocket

ENGLAND players including limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan and suspended white-ball specialist Alex Hales will be heavily out of pocket after the postponement of South Africa’s T20 global League.

Sportsmail understands that Morgan negotiated a £145,000 deal to be one of eight overseas icons at the six-week event that was due to kick off on November 3 and Hales was a round-one draft pick at £102,500.

Whether the pair, plus Kevin Pietersen, Jason Roy, Chris Jordan, Adil Rashid, Tom Curran and Sam Billings, will be paid a penny is now up in the air.

Players signing up for the global League were required to join the South African Cricketers’ Association and it will be left to the SACA to negotiate compensation with Cricket South Africa after the inaugural competition was postponed for 12 months due to a failure to secure a satisfactory broadcast deal or title sponsor.

It is expected that the South African board will argue that all contracts will be honoured for November 2018 to avoid paying out. However, that is likely to anger the high-end T20 specialists persuaded to sign up for South Africa rather than feature in the Bangladesh Premier League that runs concurrently.

Chris gayle, Lasith Malinga, Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Bravo all signed two-year deals.