Mitchell Starc faces a growing legal fight for his lost IPL contract

Australia fast bowler Mitchell Starc is at loggerheads with the insurers over his lost Indian Premier League (IPL) contract in 2018. He was picked by the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) franchise in the auction for a hefty amount of $ 1.8 million (Rs 12.83 crore). But the left-arm pacer couldn’t feature in the tournament after sustaining a fracture in this right tibial bone during the South Africa tour in March 2018.

Starc had taken out a policy that would pay him $ 1.53 million if he had missed the IPL campaign due to injury. However, after claiming the same, insurers, syndicate of Lloyd’s of London, the long-running insurance market, declared that the cricketer did not ‘meet the policy requirements for payment of the total disablement benefit’.

Clyde and Co lawyers, representing Lloyd’s of London, lodged the documents in May after Mitchell Starc filed a lawsuit in the Victorian County Court in April this year. The insurers denied that Starc ‘suffered total disablement as a result of a bodily injury as defined by the policy contract’.

The statement from the insurers

“In answer to the whole of the statement of claim, the defendant denies that the plaintiff is entitled to the relief sought or any relief at all,” the document filed by Clyde and Co claimed according to the Sydney Morning Herald. However, Starc’s bid for payment included a statement from Australia’s team doctor Richard Saw.

Also, the pacer had mentioned in his summons that he had paid a premium of $97,920 to be covered between February 27 and March 31 in 2018, when the IPL concluded. Mitchell Starc has claimed in his suit that his injury woes began during the second Test against South Africa in Port Elizabeth and things worsened in the next game only for him to suffer from a grade three tibial injury which involved a fracture in his right tibial bone.

Clyde and Co lawyers and even the Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) have refused to comment on the matter. A civil trial regarding the same has been listed on March 30 next year which will go on for three days.

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