The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is quite serious in promoting the red ball cricket as it has already instructed the Indian team players that they should represent their state teams in the domestic cricket when they are not playing international cricket.
The BCCI has also announced a “Test Cricket Incentive Scheme” for the Indian cricketers who will regularly play test cricket and now there are reports which suggest that the cricket board is planning to increase salary of the domestic level players in order to give a boost to domestic cricket. It has been reported that the chief selector Ajit Agarkar has been asked to come up with a plan as the board wants that the domestic players should earn at least the double of what they are earning in the present times. It is being said that the board is planning to pay the domestic players in the range of Rs. 75 lakh to Rs. 1 crore and the amount paid to a domestic player will depend on the number of Ranji Trophy matches played by him.
As far as the present pay structure is concerned, a player who has played around 20 Ranji Trophy matches is paid Rs. 40K per day, a player who has played 20-40 Ranji Trophy matches is paid Rs. 50K per day and a player who has played more than 40 Ranji Trophy matches is paid Rs. 60K per day.
This new scheme will certainly strengthen the domestic cricket system of the country and it will also play an important role in decreasing the difference between earnings from domestic cricket and league cricket.
The board is also not hesitating in taking action against those cricketers who are ignoring their instruction of playing domestic cricket as earlier they removed Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan from the annual retention contract list because they didn’t pay heed to the repeated reminders for playing domestic cricket.
What is your take on this new development in India’s cricket world? Do let us know.
