AB de Villiers' comments should ring alarm bells | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo
With plenty of the non-Big 3 nations struggling financially, and the rise of several lucrative T20 leagues, international cricketers for the first time have the choice between playing for their country or playing for their wallets.
While every young cricketer dreams of one day playing for their country, the inability of some of these countries to pay their cricketers a decent salary (or indeed, even pay them at all), along with the presence dysfunctional, inept or corrupt administrators, may be enough to push some of these young players into pursuing a career being a T20 mercenary for hire.
We have already seen Chris Gayle give up on the West Indies for several reasons, with plenty of very talented cricketers having followed suit, while even the likes of Sanga and Mahela retired with a few years of cricket left in them - partly to fill their wallets playing in various leagues around the world, and partly out of frustration from having to deal with the SLCB.
ABDV's recent comments about the challenges faced by cricketers having to pick between demanding international schedules and earning a quick buck T20 has been quite concerning. Surely this shouldn't be a choice to begin with right? Surely it's International cricket first, everything else second?
But that's not the reality we face.
So the question here is, should the ICC (AKA the Big 3) be stepping up and making sure that international cricketers all around the world earn a good salary, regardless of which country they play for?
The Pros of this are obvious. Redistributing funds in order to ensure the best talent in the world is able to play Test cricket is a big step towards ensuring the format remains healthy and competitive. It is the pinnacle of the sport, and thus should be played by the very best cricketers available to each nation.
On the other hand, the ICC footing the bill means putting cash in the hands of corrupt, inept boards such as the SLCB, WICB and ZCB. The struggles faced by cricketers of these countries is in no small part down to terrible leadership and management from their cricketing boards. By stepping in to bail them out, we are essentially absolving them of the consequences of their poor leadership. Wouldn't that money be better spent on helping non-Test nations that are well run (see Ireland) work towards Test status?
Discuss.
This is an important and timely conversation, and should be an eye opener especially for those who watch test cricket with their 3 buddies and think 'oh test cricket is so ****ing healthy, what are these fools talking about'.
As far as the suggestions are concerned, ICC paying all the cricketers is never going to work. At the end of the day, players are employed by their respective boards. ICC does not employ them, and does not have the resources or clout to pay their salary.
Those talking about a specific window for T20 leagues - that is a good idea but not at all feasible simply for the fact that there are too many leagues.
You don't want to clash and compete with each other, because if that happened, the other leagues would die as IPL would pay the most and everyone would flock there. And even if that weren't the case, what would be the window?
IPL takes place in April-May
Big Bash takes place in December-January. Australia doesn't play cricket in April-May
Caribbean League takes place in June-July.
Which window are you going to pick that suits everyone?
The solution is that the boards are going to have to compete at some level with these leagues by increasing the pay.
They might not be able to match it, but if they can considerably reduce the gap, then it might not be such a difficult decision and while some might still pick the money, those who want to play Test cricket would still be making close to the T20 money.
How to achieve this? Well this is where the Big 3 structure was such a failure, because it was so short term. Instead of trying to grow the game and have a more long term profitability strategy, it was all about killing the golden goose right now.
Cricket will have to rely on money from other sources, not just India and Australia and England.
There is money, you just have to build your market, build your brand and play the long game here.
Bangladesh for example is a tremendous potential, they have a huge market, and now they have money to spend on cricket as well, if teams had started playing more bilateral cricket with Bangladesh, that would only grow and they can emerge as a decent source of income.
There are other teams with big potential such as UAE or China because once again these are well off economies with sizeable markets.
I have been to the UAE and the oil tycoons there are pouring money into Tennis and F1 and Football. Why can't ICC, which is headquartered there, try to get some of these tycoons to look into cricket? Develop the UAE team, there is a huge South Asian population in UAE so they already know the sport, you just need to work on instilling cricket as part of the mainstream sports culture there.
There are plenty of options but they are all long term ones. Expanding, developing markets, building your brands, these won't happen overnight. And unfortunately BCCI, CA and ECB want to see the money NOW.
