Sunil Gavaskar wants the pay gap between domestic and IPL players ‘narrowed down as much as possible’
Sunil Gavaskar has called for a “substantial” hike in the wages paid to India’s domestic cricketers, and asked BCCI president Sourav Ganguly to look into bridging the pay gap between the Ranji Trophy and the IPL.
At present, domestic cricketers earn a match fee of INR 35,000 per match day, and share among themselves 10.40% of the BCCI’s annual media rights income. Their revenue pales in comparison to the amounts that players can earn from the IPL auction, with a minimum base price of INR 20 lakhs.
“IPL dominates Ranji Trophy,” PTI quoted Gavaskar as saying, while delivering the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture in Delhi. “Unless their match fees are increased substantially, it will be considered an orphan and poor cousin of Indian cricket.”
Gavaskar placed the earnings of domestic and IPL cricketers in relation to their respective workloads.
“I am hoping new president Sourav Ganguly will look into this,” he said. “The disparity that you see between IPL players, who don’t always play first-class cricket, and those who play all the domestic games, about 80 days, and somebody who plays 14 days of IPL.
“There is big disparity. I am talking about the uncapped players. Hopefully that will be narrowed down as much as possible.”
Source: ESPN Crickinfo