England’s recent flop show in the ongoing Ashes series would witness some stringent repercussions for England players featuring in the cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) as the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is reportedly looking to restrict their involvement in the lucrative tournament from the upcoming season.
For the previous season of the IPL, which was conducted in two-phases due to the Covid-19 pandemic, several England cricketers like Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali, and all-rounders Sam Curran and Chris Woakes were rested for the national sides’s two-Test series against New Zealand because of their involvement in lucrative league and the Three Lions later lost the series to the Blackcaps 0-1 in 2021.
Now after the current Ashes debacle, a report in The Mirror has Times on Wednesday and said that the English cricket board is conducting a thorough review of the series loss and the ECB’s managing director Ashley Giles is preparing a list of recommendations to improve the “Test team’s fortunes”.
In the ongoing five-match Ashes series, England are 0-3 down against Australia. The tourists lost the Brisbane, Adelaide and MCG Tests by nine wickets, 275 runs and an innings and 14 runs respectively and was also on the verge of another defeat in the fourth affair at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) before the last-wicket pair of Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad miraculously managed to draw it for England.
England will now aim to salvage pride in the fifth and final Test of the Ashes series at the Blundstone Arena in Hobart from January 14.
As per the report, the ECB was planning to restricting the cricketers’ involvement in the IPL to “just the first few weeks” as it was well aware that the upcoming season of the league will now be of longer duration following the addition of two more teams – Ahemdabad and Lucknow.
Meanwhile, the 2022 season of the IPL will likely clash with England’s Test summer as the knockout stages would overlap with England’s first Test against New Zealand at Lord’s in early June.
With the addition of new teams in IPL, more England Test cricketers are expected to be going under hammer and be a part of the lucrative league apart from Buttler and Moeen, who have already been retained by Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) ahead of the IPL mega auction.
The report also said that England players, who will be signed in the mega auction, will be asked to “cut short their time in the league so that they can play some first-class cricket before the New Zealand series begins”.
Earlier, former England skipper Michael Atherton ahd also slammed the ECB for allowing its players to play in the IPL at the expense of national duty.
“The leading multi-format players are paid seven-figure sums, but, incredibly, the ECB washes its hands of them for two months of the year during the Indian Premier League,” he had written in the Times.
“The players should be told that, while the ECB will be accommodating of the request to play in IPL, a 12-month contract is exactly that, and the granting of a no-objection certificate to play in IPL and other franchised competitions is contingent on it being in the best interests of the England team. Players should not miss international duty to play in the IPL, nor be rested and rotated to allow them to play elsewhere,” added he.