The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Tendulkar or Pietersen will not come cheap for CA’s IPL

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Tendulkar or Pietersen will not come cheap for CA’s IPL

Melbourne: Cricket Australia may be hoping that the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Kevin Pietersen feature in its IPL-style domestic Twenty20 tournament next summer but some state teams’ officials are not as upbeat as they don’t have enough money to lure the stars.

Lack of money

New South wales Chief Executive of Cricket, David Gilbert said lack of money will make it extremely difficult to lure the exorbitantly high-priced cricketers to Australian shores.

“(We need) someone like a Pietersen or Andrew Flintoff or a Tendulkar. My concern is that we may not realistically have the funds to attract those sorts of players? Because they’re not going to come cheap,” Gilbert said.

“You presume Pietersen doesn’t get out of bed unless it’s a sizeable amount of money.”

“We can’t get away from the fact that it’s a domestic competition, so I can’t imagine the funds available will be sizeable to the level I’m talking about, but who knows?” he was quoted as saying by Sydney Morning Herald.

Not work

Gilbert argued that fielding relatively unknown overseas players will not work.

“It’s one thing wanting your team to win with an overseas player, but it’s also about the public wanting to watch that player.

“We could trawl English county cricket and find a very, very good Twenty20 player, but it’s someone that people here may never have heard of, and I don’t think that’s what we’re trying to do here. We need to have someone who obviously plays good cricket but also appeals to the public.” — PTI

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