‘That was fantastic prioritising’ – Lancashire CEO lauds BCCI’s steps towards domestic cricket

BCCI Logo. (Source – BCCI)

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has allowed players to play for the County Club in the United Kingdom. As a result, the likes of Yuzvendra Chahal and Venkatesh Iyer are the new additions to the list of players to join the bandwagon. Lancashire Club’s CEO Daniel Gidney has termed the development “fantastic prioritising”. 

BCCI has previously asserted all international players to feature in the Indian domestic leagues such as the Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy, given they are not on national duties. The star players like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Jasprit Bumrah were excluded from the list. Gidney upheld the initiative of the richest board in the world.

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“Imagine a governing body (BCCI) actually saying that out loud. That was fantastic prioritising,” Gidney said as quoted by The Guardian.

Agents don’t care about the championship: Gidney

Gidney was one of the many who were against the trend of players prioritising franchise leagues over County. His distress stemmed from the fact that cricketers were lured by the money, staying away from the red-ball competitions. Expressing his lamentation of the state the County game is in, he quipped that agents [franchise leaugue] “don’t care” about the arena. 

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“We need to have more of an open conversation. Coaches get blamed, administrators get blamed, but if you want to blame anybody, blame agents. I think the game as a whole needs to come together to find a way to support the championship. England players don’t have to play in the championship, agents don’t care about the championship,” he added. 

“More prize money would help and I think we need to find a way of paying four or five players a lot more money. Instead of GBP 80,000-90,000 being the top domestic salary, we need to find a way of paying GBP 200k and saying part of that deal is that you don’t play franchise cricket,” Gidney concluded.