Suddenly some decent overseas players are worth $340,000 for playing half the BBL and then heading to the UAE to more than double their money.
Local players who have propped up the BBL for a decade are wondering when they’re going to cash in. The answer is many of them won’t unless box office stars revive the BBL and Australian Cricket can attract more than the current $200 million a year in broadcast rights it receives. The next two years are make or break.
Matthew Wade will be an attractive candidate for overseas T20 leagues.Credit:Getty Images
The welcome if desperate moves to entice Warner into the Big Bash and keep Lynn for 11 of the 14 Adelaide Strikers games before he heads to the UAE are only stopgaps.
Peripheral Australian players who are BBL stars such as Matthew Wade, who will retire from international cricket after the T20 World Cup in October, and Ben McDermott, the BBL’s leading run scorer last season, could make far more playing as T20 guns for hire.
There will be little incentive for players like them to take up modest state contracts, as Perth-based freelancer Tim David has highlighted with his extraordinary $1.5 million IPL deal.
A Twenty20 phenomenon. Tim David batting for the Hobart Hurricanes.Credit:Getty Images
Australia’s Test captain and the world’s best bowler, Pat Cummins, currently earns about $4 million a year from cricket; $2 million from his cricket Australia contract, $1 million from the IPL and about $1 million in endorsements.
But there are only 20 Cricket Australia contracts offering players on average more than $1 million each, and a significant number of centrally contracted players don’t usually play in the Big Bash.
The best of the rest receives about $400,000 on a combined state and Big Bash contract with most averaging half that or less.
For the moment at least, the grass is greener elsewhere.
Warner was exploring a January contract with the UAE T20 league, prompting Cricket Australia to sign him on an unprecedented marketing deal for a current player to have him turn out in the Big Bash with Sydney Thunder.
But these welcome short-term deals to try and revive the Big Bash will come to nothing without a cash injection from somewhere.
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