By IANS
Auckland : England captain Paul Collingwood and stand-in New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum have expressed their fears over Indian Twenty20 Cricket League’s attempt to lure their best players, English media reported Tuesday.
As the two teams head in Auckland Tuesday for the first of two Twenty20 matches, their captains have been forced to acknowledge that the shortest form of the game has become quite popular in limited time.
And after watching Shane Bond giving up his Kiwi career for the Indian Twenty20, McCullum admitted his concern over losing more players.
“To lose Shane was very, very disappointing but he has his reasons and we’ve got to learn to function without him as we have done in the past. We can’t really afford to lose any more players to the Indian leagues, but you’re always worried about it,” McCullum was quoted as saying by Daily Mirror.
“I guess the guys on the fringe are the ones most at risk but at the same time you hope the environment you create leads to guys wanting to hold on that bit longer,” he said.
“We do need to hold on to as much depth as we possibly can because we don’t have talent to burn,” he added.
In a role reversal, Scott Styris has given up Test cricket to focus on the one-day and T20 forms of the game and Collingwood agrees that this will happen more and more.
Collingwood might not have to worry any of his current crop of players will turn their backs on England, but he reckoned that more and more players will be tempted to join the billion dollar party that is the sanctioned Indian Premier League.
“We’ve had a Twenty20 World Cup which was a massive success and when players get to the back end of their careers they are going to have to make a choice whether to play all three,” Collingwood said.
“We are very comfortable playing for England and love having the three lions on our shirts when we play.
It has not really been an option for us to go to India because we are well looked after by the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), but of course there are massive incentives and people will think about it,” he said.