Indian Premier League fast-tracks county talent
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
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Who's afraid of the Indian Premier League? Almost everyone who is English, it seems, writes Ed Smith in the Telegraph.
One concern is that the IPL may damage morale in the England camp by exposing the team to vast inequalities of income. I have always resisted this idea because it should not matter to a sportsman what everyone else is earning. But the fact is that most people do care. Economists suggest that players worry more about their wages compared to colleagues than they do about the bottom line in pounds.
Old-timers line up for their big pay day, but why doesn't Stuart Broad want to jump on the bandwagon? asks Barney Ronay in the Guardian.
This kind of thing, naked money talk, is embarrassing for English people. The prospect of hammer price makes us squirm and make Prince Charles-style hyyyuunnnhg noises. Just look at Stuart Broad, who has opted out of the IPL in order to "have a rest". Broad, of course, isn't having a rest. It's just that – so blond, so nice – he's uniquely vulnerable to this kind of stooped and ear-reddening money-shame, the fevered confusion at the prospect of tipping the barber, the gloomy exit from the cafe, insultingly under-changed again ...
... But mainly, you worry about the aged Corky in among all those nubile Aussie Under-19 tyros, lassoed into his corset, powder flaking from his face, leering at you across the discotheque floor, and then, next day, after a night of creaky, liver-spotted half-trackers, beached and sallow in the morning sunlight.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo