By IANS
Sydney : Throwing his weight behind the multi-million dollar Indian Premier League (IPL), captain Ricky Ponting said the potential clash of sponsors’ interests of his board and that of the Twenty20 tournament would not stop his Australian teammates from playing in India.
Ponting said that the Australian cricket board could not stop players from playing and collecting million-dollar pay cheques when the innovative tournament starts in April.
Cricket Australia (CA) is concerned that its contracted players might, for example, wear Vodafone advertising in the IPL when ‘3 Mobile’ is the exclusive telecommunications sponsor of the Australian team.
“There are already some globally-protected sponsors of CA. I don’t think CA would be able to make any of their other sponsors global sponsors. If they tried to do that I’m sure the Players’ Association would have something to say about it. It would be a little bit unfair if that was the case,” Ponting was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph.
CA has said that it wants the IPL to succeed but it also knows that without any Australia stars the tournament’s credibility could suffer.
But IPL chairman Lalit Moti has declared that the tournament would go ahead even without Australian players after CA said it would not release its players until they see the full details of their IPL contracts.
But Ponting said CA would have no choice but to release its players.
“It’s a domestic competition, as county cricket is. There’s never been any worry about Cricket Australia releasing guys to go and play county cricket,” Ponting said.
Even if CA relents and releases players, the Australians might have to miss IPL if their tour of Pakistan, which clashes with the Indian tournament, goes ahead.
CA has not yet confirmed the tour because there are security and safety apprehensions in Pakistan, which has seen a lot of turmoil following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.