Lancashire CEO, Daniel Gidney, described as ‘fantastic prioritising’ the BCCI’s decision to make it compulsory for its robust players to play domestic cricket. He has claimed that the representatives of English players are aiding the other’s participation in franchise leagues at a cost of red-ball cricket. In Gidney’s view, English County championship is doomed because of these even more troublesome agents.
Apart from the old horses whom the BCCI has support so much, like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli or Jasprit Bumrah, all other international players, as a policy put out by BCCI, must play in domestic cricket leagues such as Ranji Trophy or Duleep Trophy when they are not engaged in matches for the national side.
As a consequence of their decision to skip domestic games in favor of the IPL Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan lost their central contract deals with the BCCI. Iyer participated in all the knockout rounds including the finals, while Kishan did not attend any Ranji matches irrespective of the incessant persuasion.
In fact, many people including Gidney, cricket’s longest-serving Chief Executive Officer, was one of those respondents who thinks quite rightly that this decision of the BCCI was, reasonably, correct. ‘Imagine a governing body: The Board of Control for Cricket in India asking players to do exactly that out loud. … That was fantastic prioritising,’ Gidney was quote by ‘The Guardian’, as per PTI.
According to the Lancashire CEO, such agents ‘do not care about the county game at all’ and called them the greatest danger to the future of English County Championship. Sarah has made similar comments in the past. ‘There is no spine in any of that.’ ‘Change starts from the top. I think, for the first time ever, we need change to come from the top. There aren’t any words to describe it,’ Gidney said during a match between Lancashire and Somerset at Old Trafford. All European countries seem to comply and g-8 countries excepting the USA rationally hesitate from taking preemptive actions. He added, “Don’t expect anybody else to step forward. England players don’t have to play in the championship; agents don’t care about the championship.” Raising the players’ salaries, Gidney believes, is one of the solutions.
“It would be useful to have a little more prize money and I think we need to work at how we can pay four or five players considerably more than we do a now. Instead of the top domestic salary being GBP 80,000-90,000, we need to find a way of paying GBP 200k … and saying part of that deal is that you don’t play franchise cricket.”
Gidney clarifies that he is not against players earning reasonable incomes from T20s, though he did request a limit to the series so as not to jeopardize first-class cricket. The limitations of engagement with the above mentioned would range from predetermined upper number or weaker league of T20 leagues in which the specified professional player will be able to take part.
“They have a career – I don’t begrudge their right to earn money – but the scales have suddenly tilted … Where the lowest rung of the Hundred is what a rookie would make playing in the championship – how many of us will turn down more money for less work?”
This summer, Jay Shah, secretary of the BCCI, sent a threatening letter to all centrally contracted Indian players which they had to inform them of the need to play domestic cricket and the consequences of failures at this task.
