Rash dash for cash

At Australia's Boxing Day sales there are stampedes as crowds of shoppers rush for ridiculously priced items. People are crushed in the frenzy for $50 washing machines and $5 shoes and the greedy procession is filmed for television news. The few winners show off their prized purchases like World Cups, but overall the whole process is bruising and demeaning.

Australia's best cricketers are always busy on Boxing Day, but their eagerness to be involved in the Indian Premier League (IPL), which still relies on permission from Cricket Australia, would get them a public-holiday bargain in any department store. Currently they are the shoppers and the white goods are pots of Indian gold. It is the same for the rest of the world as cricketers sprint for Twenty20 cash.

For a few weeks' work they could seal a payment with more zeroes than Glenn McGrath, who is back from retirement, managed in a year. Money is undoubtedly attractive and sportspeople have earned the right to lots of it, but the back-flips for potential reward have been astounding. The March tour to Pakistan has not been called off - a neutral venue remains a possibility - but the players are already calculating with their managers, and arguing with Cricket Australia, about what they can gain if they collect some bonus time off.

Ricky Ponting wants a window for the tournament so international performers don't retire prematurely, Andrew Symonds can't understand why Cricket Australia is "putting up a heap of red tape", and Brett Lee is confident of a plan that will make "everybody happy". Look out for a Champions Twenty20 league that the current players can appear in later in the year, leaving the recently retired men and those not engaged in international duties to walk out in the IPL.

If the Pakistan series is cancelled, the Australia squad members must stay at home, resting and preparing for the two-month trip to the West Indies. The team is due to leave on May 10, three weeks before the IPL final, so any Indian adventure would be brief. It would also increase the likelihood of injury despite the compensation of a heaving wallet.

Apart from protecting its corporate backers, Cricket Australia is also reluctant to let its contract holders go because of conflicting tour dates, training camps, Centre of Excellence appointments, and its desire to protect the Future Tours Programme. Which is why the lure of the Champions League tournament later in the year - it would run as well as the IPL - is attractive and figuring prominently in the current Australia-India board negotiations.

The off-season series with Bangladesh lost its two Tests when Cricket Australia finally realised the not-for-profit contest was being staged at the same time as the Olympics. Darwin will host only three one-day internationals instead, and the stars who have complained about being jaded from too much cricket are likely to receive what they originally craved. Only now many of them don't want a lighter winter.

The turnaround of the players' unions has been swifter than that by the men in the middle. For years the Australian Cricketers' Association (ACA) and the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations (FICA) have had one major platform, screaming about burnout and overload. The noise has been so loud and regular it has become as numbing as shopping-centre background music.

In 2006 Tim May, the FICA chief executive, was worried players might turn to drugs to cope with the punishing schedules, but now he and his ACA counterpart, Paul Marsh, are fighting for a quick fix. They want a six-week window free of Tests and one-day internationals so their members can switch between board and IPL demands. Of course the idea wins support from the players and their managers.

At least the associations' change in stance is not a surprise. They push for what their group wants. Previously it was less, now it is more. Cricket and money.

Arguments about the Twenty20 being easier because of its shorter time scale have been rejected by those who know the demands. The Australians were surprised by the intensity of last year's abbreviated World Cup in South Africa and suffered a series of injuries. Earlier this month Ponting, who was recovering from a back problem, revealed he would have been more comfortable in a one-day international than the Twenty20 match he missed against India because of the format's exertions.

Everybody is learning about the new game and wondering how far it can go. Channel Nine, the traditional broadcaster of summer cricket in Australia, is not convinced of the off-season worth of the concept and did not bid for the IPL rights. They were picked up by the smaller Ten Network, which has paid up to A$15m for matches that will start here around midnight.

In Australia the various football codes will hold more attraction to cold sport followers from late April to the final in June, but the promise of potential riches is swaying more than players. The charge towards the IPL is as unseemly as any shopping-centre crush.