IPL 2023: Top England Cricketers offered 50Cr by IPL franchises to quit International Cricket: In a massive bid to acquire a brand new model of players’ contracts, the top Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises have approached as many as six England cricketers to play franchise cricket throughout the year in exchange for an offer of as high as INR 50 Crores.
As per the report of ‘Times London’, the IPL franchises are making giant strides in T20 cricket by striking multi-million dollar contracts to six premier English cricketers to quit international cricket altogether and provide their services to the IPL teams, who now have their bases in top T20 leagues across the globe, including, the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), the SA T20 League (SAT20) in South Africa, the ILT20 League of UAE and the upcoming Major League Cricket in the USA.
The deals offered by the IPL franchises are roughly close to 5 million pounds which equal INR 50 Crores.
As of now, there is no mention of the IPL franchises, that have offered such a lucrative deal to the England cricketers, and the cricketers have been presented with such deals.
‘The Times’ report quoted, “Initial discussions have taken place after at least six English players, including some international stars, were approached by IPL franchise owners and asked whether, in principle, they would accept a deal that would make an Indian team their main employer, rather than the ECB or an English county.”
Interestingly, the move to make T20 franchises the main employer rather than the respective cricket board isn’t new to the world of sports. This principle is widely used in Football where the elite players are primarily contracted by the premier Football franchises and play for their respective franchises across the globe. The players get released by the Football franchises to take part in World Cups, which happens other way around in cricket.
“This development follows discussions among players’ unions around the world about the potential implications of 12-month franchise contracts, which would be a significant step towards the football model of elite players being primarily contracted to their team and released for international duty, rather than the other way around,” read the report further.
Some sources close to the development said that such deals could be executed by the end of the year. The clarity on the development will come in the upcoming months as we head closer to this model.
With T20 leagues growing across the world, there is no denying such models where cricketers will be getting a comprehensive contract to play for their teams throughout the year.
Notably, as per the reports, earlier, such deals were offered to the Australian players as well, but now the English players have also become a part of it.
“Discussions have already taken place with a number of high-profile Australian players about full-time deals but this has now been extended to English players. Contracts could be worth upwards of GBP 2 million a year and even as high as GBP 5 million more than five times the value of the highest England central contracts.”
If the IPL franchises execute such deals with top Australian and England cricketers, it would be a massive step towards the future of T20 cricket. Furthermore, it will also have an impact on international cricket, which is alive for now due to the participation of the top cricketers in the world.
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