Sri Lanka Legend Aravinda de Silva, while acknowledging the value of IPL and other T20 leagues in benefiting cricket, urged India to allow their top players to take part in tournaments overseas.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) has grown into cricket’s hottest property, with a recent media rights auction valuing the IPL at a whopping $6.2 billion, or $15 million per match, making it bigger in those terms than football’s English Premier League which is valued at $11 million per match.
“It’s like the county cricket of those days which gave the English cricketers the advantage,” Sri Lanka’s all time finest batsman was quoted as saying.
“The IPL, Big Bash or in England the Hundred and T20 Blitz, those are tournaments which allow players to develop.”
Aravinda, Sri Lanka’s world cup winning Icon, said India should enable smaller nations to share in the riches generated to grow the game, raise global playing standards and improve skill levels, something that would ultimately benefit the IPL.
“If you have one dominating country, you can see from the IPL, they basically run a monopoly on the premier leagues because the Indian cricketers are not allowed to play in other leagues,” Aravinda said.
“So what will probably happen is that the standard — if it keeps dropping and if there is no real competition — at some point it’s going to affect the global game.
“Unless (India) find a way to support the other countries and get them up to grips with the kind of support levels which the game requires nowadays, it’s a negative for the cricket world.
“It’s the (world governing body) ICC’s responsibility to make sure that it’s done in a manner where these countries keep developing, otherwise we don’t want a situation like Zimbabwe and South Africa, how they dipped from their standard of cricket.”
