Australia’s Test and ODI captain Pat Cummins and all-format batter Travis Head, who also play together in the IPL for the Sunrisers Hyderabad, have reportedly been offered life-altering sums of money to leave international cricket altogether in favour of T20 franchise leagues.
Top Australian cricketers Pat Cummins and Travis Head have declined the multi-million dollar offers to step away from international cricket in order to move into the T20 franchise sunset. As per a report by The Age, both Cummins and Head, who also play together in the IPL for the Sunrisers Hyderabad, were offered a sum in upwards of $10million (Rs 58.24 crore approx.) each per year by an IPL franchise owner to just play the franchise leagues around the world but both respectfully rejected the offer.
The report stated that both Cummins and Head were still very much committed to play for Australia across all three formats and hence, don’t play in any other T20 tournament apart from IPL. Cummins and Head did participated in the USA’s Major League Cricket (MLC) last year after the T20 World Cup and according to the southpaw, that was just “to get a taste of what it would be like to play franchise cricket.”
“I had IPL into a World Cup into MLC, so I wanted to see what it was like to basically play four months of franchise cricket.
“You want to have every option available to you, you want to experience things and understand how things operate. A lot of people are making certain decisions around the world, and it was a perfect opportunity for me to understand that and see what it was like for whenever the time comes for what I may or may not do in the future,” Head was quoted by The Age as saying last year.
The top Australian players at the highest level including the likes of Mitchell Starc, Head and Hazlewood, among others earn about $1.5 million (Rs 8.7 crore) a year from their national contracts, while Cummins nearly earns a double of it, including his captaincy stipend.
A couple of years ago, Jofra Archer was offered a similar contract by the Reliance Industried Limited-owned Mumbai Indians, to play franchise cricket year round for their satellite franchises in the MLC, ILT20 and SA20. Similarly, players like Nicholas Pooran (West Indies) and Heinrich Klaasen (South Africa), who weren’t fortunate enough to be playing for one of the teams in the Big three, gave up international cricket at the age of 29 and 33 to become T20 freelancers.