Sutherland questions IPL's future

In an action-packed first week of the Indian Premier League most of the reaction has been positive, but James Sutherland, the Cricket Australia chief executive, has spoken out about the problems already facing the competition. Sutherland, who remains unconvinced that Twenty20 is good for the game, has questioned the sustainability of the lucrative six-week tournament.

"It's all very well to have a whole lot of hype around a competition," Sutherland told 2KY. "In order for it to be sustainable it needs to have its own virtual cycle that keeps all the parties happy.

"It's nice to pay the players well and get big money from television rights and sponsorships, but ultimately you've got to provide a return for the owners or in this case the franchises. As I understand it, the franchisees are starting to ask questions already."

Sutherland said a lot of tickets to games had been given away and there were also other promotional costs. "It's going to be a long six weeks for the franchisees if they struggle to sell tickets," he said. "I think in Hyderabad for the first game they only had a third of the ground full."

Sutherland said the IPL "would have to be" under financial pressure. "You look at the number [cost] for the franchises, somewhere between $70 million and $100 million and they pay the players on top of that," he said. "Explain it to me how they get their return."

Australia's international contingent at the event will head back to Brisbane next week for a pre-series camp for the West Indies tour. The players are due to arrive in Queensland on May 4 and will spend almost a week fine-tuning, although no practice matches have been scheduled by the coach Tim Nielsen.

The chances of Australia's one-day players appearing in next year's version of the IPL are virtually non-existent as the postponed trip to Pakistan will be held at the same time. "There's absolutely no possibility of a window that compromises the Future Tours Programme and our international commitment," Sutherland said.

"It's just simply there was no other window, no alternative. We had long and challenging meetings with Pakistan trying to get them to understand we've got a very busy schedule coming up and the only window available to us was the ones that we announced."