With the lucrative Indian Premier League auction to be held later on Thursday, all eyes will be the top players among the 332 players going under the hammer in Kolkata.
Many of the world’s top cricketers such as Australia’s Glenn Maxwell and Pat Cummins, West Indian pacer Sheldon Cottrell as well as World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan. But even as the top players attract the big numbers, IPL auction have always thrown up a surprise or two when it comes to uncapped players.
Almost every auction has had a domestic talent become the centre of frantic bidding between franchises and become a millionaire, before playing an international game. Jofra Archer, Krunal Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Varun Chakravarthy, Shivam Dube are a few examples of the same. Several uncapped players who have triggered a bidding war and not all of them have been able to make a mark on the tournament.
Keeping this in mind, former captain and IPL Governing Council member Sunil Gavaskar has asked for a cap on the salaries for the uncapped players.
Gavaskar wrote this in a letter to Board of Control for Cricket in India president Sourav Ganguly and IPL chairman, according to a report by Mumbai Mirror.
The former captain said that the disproportionate IPL pay package for uncapped players could demotivate other domestic players who would go through the hard grind of the domestic circuit for a much lesser amount.
He also suggested that there should a cap of about $100,000 or Rs 75 lakh for uncapped players from all countries. He also suggested that IPL money could come back to the domestic circuit. In case of a tie, he said that a franchises should provide a secret bid and the highest bidder gets the player with the extra amount being used for the Indian domestic players’ welfare.
The example Gavaskar gave was of Varun Chakravarthy, who was not even a regular in Tamil Nadu Ranji team and yet attracted a bit of Rs 8.4 crore last year and ended up playing just one IPL game.
While there is no response from Ganguly yet, Gavaskar was quoted as saying by the newspaper that Patel has agreed to look into the matter.
However with the auction hours way, it remains to be seen if it will be implemented.
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