Cricket Australia Tries To Lure Players Away From IPL With Multi-Year Contracts

Cricket Australia has offered its players multi-year contracts for the next three years to dissuade them from participating in the popular cricket T20 tournament Indian Premiere League (IPL), a report has claimed.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted a report saying Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s newly re-signed executive general manager of team performance, had individually approached Test captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and fast bowlers Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins in recent weeks with verbal offers of three-year deals rather than the standard one-year central contracts on the condition that they skip the IPL.

It is learnt that the offers were met with a lukewarm response from all the players approached. The terms, discussed informally with Howard, were regarded by the players as underwhelming, with the only perceived incentive for them missing the IPL being the security of a three-year contract.

Players like Smith and Warner, captains of their IPL franchises, collect more than $1 million a year for the T20 tournament. This figure is set to soar much higher in the future. In that scenario, Cricket Australia will have to be prepared to offer big enough incentives to lure the players away from the IPL.

With Inputs From ANI.