Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Indian Premier League


Andrew Symonds will be paid AUD $1.47 to play in the new Indian Premier League.

The cricket world is a buzz at the moment. Today the world's leading players have been auctioned to the 8 Indian franchises in the new Twenty20 competition to start in April. It will run for 6 weeks with the final on June 1st.
MS Dhoni is the highest paid Indian player at USD $1.5 million. Andrew Symonds is the highest paid Australian at USD $1.35 million. It is exciting to see cricket players get paid more than ever before in their careers. There is a lot of money for cricket in India, most of it coming from television rights.
I have long argued that a Super League is needed in cricket. I actually wrote to Cricket Australia about this a few years back, but they never replied to my letter. An Indian Premier League does not mean such a concept is not possible in Australia, but since there is talk of future competitions being officially scheduled into the ICC schedule, there may not be a lot of room in the calendar. Considering that a maximum of 16 Australians can play in the competition, Australians may become hungry for similar entertainment on home soil.
All of the teams will be quite multicultural in nature. This should hopefully go a long way to mending some of the racial controversies of the Australian Summer.
It seems the revolution in cricket has begun, albeit tightly controlled by the ICC.

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