As the much awaited IPL auction has been done and dusted, The New Zealand Cricket Players Association has hit out at the League’s Player Auction process, describing it as “undignified and cruel”. This is the first time cricket administrators from a country have openly criticised the auction.
“I think the whole system is archaic and deeply humiliating for the players, who are paraded like cattle for all the world to see,” Heath Mills, chief executive of the New Zealand Cricket Players Association said.
Mills backed the views of Peter Clinton, a former chief executive of Wellington Cricket, who tweeted: “The IPL Auction is such an undignified, cruel and unnecessary employment practice. Ridiculous that it exists today, belongs in the medieval ages.”
“There’s a lot of good things about the Indian Premier League and it’s been great for cricket but I’d like to see it mirror the rest of professional sport in the way they engage athletes,” Mills said.
“Some players do exceptionally well out of if but the vast majority would like to see the system changed. They would like to negotiate with coaches and owners behind closed doors.”
“The players enter the auction not knowing where they are going, who their team-mates are going be, who’s managing them, who the owners are — no other sports league in the world engages players on that basis,” he said.
