English cricketers agree a new pay deal to keep more of their IPL wages

There is a good news for English cricketers, after their victory in the opening match of the Champions Trophy over the Asian side Bangladesh. They will now be able to keep more of their wages that they earn from the Indian Premier League (IPL) after agreeing on a new pay deal with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

The new pay deal will end a row which threatened to strain the relation between the players and the governing body. Former English skipper and opener Andrew Strauss who is serving as the director of the English team has agreed to a new deal that will see players pay back less of their central contract or county salaries while playing for IPL side.

Under the current agreement, Test players have to reimburse the ECB 0.5 percent of their annual salary every day they are in India with those paid by their counties having to pay back one percent every day for the first 21 days, dropping to 0.7 from then onwards.

Next year those players with an IPL franchise will have to pay back one day’s salary for each day on IPL duty, simplifying the system and reducing the amount they will have to fork out. For example, Ben Stokes was being deducted a sum of around £75,000 of his ECB contract while he earned a sum of £1.7m through IPL salary.

Similar situation to the Australian board

Strauss is highly confident that the ECB will avoid a similar pay row that has inundated Australian cricket and all the talks are on hold until the board completes its next broadcast rights deal which is expected to be announced at the end of this month and which they hope will be worth £1bn.

“I’m in no way commenting on what’s happening in Cricket Australia, because I don’t know the ins and outs of it. But I’d like to think we can have some sort of mature conversations with TEPP (the Team England Player Partnership group that negotiates for the players) and the players themselves early enough to prevent us going down that sort of route,” said Strauss.

“What I’m focused on is making sure the relationships between ourselves as the national governing body and our players who are contracted to us are as good as they possibly can be. That’s the best way of ensuring that those conversations happen in good faith,” he concluded.