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Money or Pride: The Difficult Decision Faced by Modern Day Professional Cricketers
An analysis of the proliferation of Franchise-based Cricket and the fall in the passion for representing one’s nation…
If you asked a child of the late nineties as to what was their ultimate childhood cricketing goal, it would have been to represent their nation in athletics. The sense of fulfillment and pride in sporting your national cap and stepping out onto the field was unparalleled. Winning a game for your fellow countrymen was deemed as being the greatest honor and accomplishment in cricket. There was no substitute for the pride received by victory. However, as the potential financial gains in franchise-based cricket increased, many cricketers were lured away from the wholesome desire to represent their home and those that represent. Thus, this article will focus on cricket and its failure to bridge the gap between the individual ‘financial needs’ of international sportsmen, and their desire, or need to represent their nation.
Representing one’s nation in sports requires sheer hard work and dedication. It’s a decade or two of blood, sweat, and tears (quite literally). A constant cycle of call-ups and exclusions from the team that either coerces you into being a better player or makes you crumble and fade away. For the pre-millennial cricket enthusiasts, this was the only route to converting their passion into a profession. It has to be said that cricket, at first, did not have significant financial rewards at stake. There were no shortcuts to success or to achieving personal gratification in the sport. This narration took an unexpected twist when the cricketing world welcomed the phenomenon of franchise-based cricket.
However, once the perks of the IPL were recognized by other boards around the world, this annual extravaganza was multiplied. Suddenly, most cricketing nations had leagues attracting foreign players who were lured by financial gains on the line. It was basic rational thinking under economics; why would you turn down a contract that simply requires a player to participate in a few twenty over matches within a month and a half, for double or even triple earnings in comparison to what one might receive in international cricket. It was, at this point, when the passion for nationalistic representation in cricket began to diminish.
As a result, through the need to have greater financial gains, it was not only offered from franchises that players were accepting. Many began to overstep the line and went against the spirit of the sport in accepting offers from bookies aiming to fix matches or fix a certain session in the game. These illegal approaches have not only culminated in the destruction of the players’ careers and reputations but have brought great shame upon the sport as a whole.
There needs to be a revival of the passion of playing for your nation. We, as cricketing devotees, can no longer tolerate the fact that our best players are injured due to playing for too many franchises and hence, cannot be on international duty. The ICC along with the boards of its members should trim the window for franchise-based cricket, seek to improve pay for cricketers when representing their nations, and rekindle the true spirit of our beautiful game. The clock is ticking…
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