15 Australian Players Offered $500,000 To Skip BBL For UAE League: Report

The International League (ILT20) in UAE has reportedly offered 15 top Australian players a whopping AUD 700,000 deals to ditch the Big Bash League (BBL), dates of which are overlapping, causing considerable tension in Cricket Australia (CA)'s ranks. The Big Bash League will be played between December 13 to February 4 while the inaugural edition of ILT20 is scheduled from January 6 to February 12, making it virtually impossible for Australian players to take part in both the tournaments.

According to a report in Sydney Morning Herald, "As many as 15 Australian players have been offered contracts worth up to AUD 700,000 a year to abandon the Big Bash League and play in the UAE Twenty20 tournament in January." Most of the top Australian players have no obligation to play BBL under their existing central contract, with Warner not having played a single edition since 2014.

The BBL's highest payment till date from the draft has been D'arcy Short's $258,000 (AUD 370,000) and the money compared to what has been paid to marquee Australian players in IPL, has been significantly lesser.

But with Indian IPL owners investing in UAE and CSA T20 leagues, the BBL will need to revamp its pay structure to keep the best in the business interested.

According to Australian newspapers 'The Age' and 'The Sydney Morning Herald' by senior cricket sources, "the scale of the attempted raid on Australian players goes far beyond the threat of losing one player – David Warner – to the UAE because he does not have a BBL deal." The paper also revealed: "UAE contract sizes so far above and beyond what has been on offer in the BBL have placed Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers Association under pressure to reassure players that they are not