'Easy money has spoilt many a promising talent' - Sunil Gavaskar calls for salary cap for uncapped players in IPL auction

Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar feels that the salaries of uncapped players at the IPL mega auction must be capped at INR 1 crore in a bid to keep the young ones grounded and ensure they don’t become overnight millionaires, which can have adverse impacts in the long run.

Gavaskar’s comments come only two days before the 2022 mega auction, scheduled in Bengaluru on February 12 and 13, with as many as 355 of the total 590 players in line to go under the hammer being uncapped talents, including members of the recently-crowned Indian U19 World Cup team.

The former cricketer further reckoned that in no case should success at age-level cricket be considered a guarantee of succeeding at the international level or the IPL owing to the significant difference of standard of cricket played.

Far too many get carried away with easy money: Sunil Gavaskar

“The mega auction will happen over the weekend and some of our Under-19 boys could become crorepatis in a few blinks of the eye,” he wrote for Mid-day. “Doing well at the under-19 level doesn’t guarantee success at the IPL or even international level as has been seen over the years. The difference in standards is huge.

“Far too many get carried away and lose focus and are out of the game or seek the mirage of greener-looking pastures. The fair thing would be to put a limit of say Rs 1 crore for uncapped players so that they know that to go further and earn more they have a lot of hard work ahead.

“Easy money has spoilt many a promising talent and that’s something the administrators can prevent by ensuring that an uncapped player remains eager to keep performing year after year and not fall by the wayside as so many have done in the past,” he further observed.

This is not the first time Gavaskar, a former member of the IPL Governing Council, has voiced his opinion regarding the imposition of such a cap on the uncapped players’ salaries; he expressed the same in 2019 in a letter addressed to BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and IPL chairman Brijesh Patel.

The easy money earned by uncapped players is a travesty to the senior domestic players who have done the hard grind but receive much lesser was Gavaskar’s argument back then.