Cricket's industrial revolution
Cricket currently represents the most fascinating and complex, given its three formats, laboratory for future industrial action, writes Osman Samiuddin in the National
Akhila Ranganna
25-Feb-2013
Cricket currently represents the most fascinating and complex, given its three formats, laboratory for future industrial action, writes Osman Samiuddin in the National. And gradually, the increasing tension between owners and workers seems unavoidable, and maybe growing industrial action, too, and feels, Osman writes, queasily like an inevitability.
The scene is changing. Money, and lots of it, is flooding in, unevenly and mostly to privately-owned clubs in Twenty20 leagues in different countries rather than to national boards.Individuals, such as Andrew Symonds, Chris Gayle and Lasith Malinga, recognise the change and are beginning to prioritise lucrative club deals over national representation.
A recent Fica survey puts this trend into numbers. Nearly a third of the players questioned said they would retire from international cricket prematurely to pursue careers with club-based leagues such as the Indian Premier League (IPL); 40 per cent said that given the higher pay in such leagues they could foresee a day where obligations to leagues could take priority over obligation to national boards.
Akhila Ranganna is assistant editor (Audio) at ESPNcricinfo