The last few years have seen a rise in the relevance of international leagues and more recently it has called into question the sustainability of one-day cricket. This was further stated in the recent annual report of FICA which suggested international cricketers except India to reject their respective country’s central contracts to become freelance agents for T20 leagues across the world.
It is to be noted that the Indian players’ body is not under the aegis of FICA, whose sample survey does not include Indian cricketers.
According to FICA’s annual report, “49% would consider rejecting a central contract if paid more to play in the domestic league”.
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This comes at a time when the debate about the relevance of ODI cricket has intensified. Hence the report suggests that there has been a significant decline in the percentage of cricketers who still think about ODIs World The cup is the most important event in the ICC calendar.
The report said, “54% still consider the 50-over World Cup to be the peak ICC event, although this has dropped significantly from 86% in the 2018/19 FICA survey.”
FICA in its report has divided the current employment scenario of cricketers into three different categories – Traditional Market, Hybrid Market, Free Agency Market.
The percentage split in the traditional market is 18% which is about players with primary domestic/international contracts. The hybrid market, which includes primary domestic/international contracts as well as foreign domestic contracts (T20 leagues, counties), accounts for 42% of cricketers, while the most alarming rate of growth is the free agency market at 40 per cent.
The free agency market consists entirely of several domestic and foreign domestic contracts (own country’s T20 league as well as other T20 leagues around the world).
Interestingly, the conclusion drawn from this trend is that the traditional market only consists of Indian players as they are not allowed to play overseas T20 leagues.
“The growing trend is for players to move towards hybrid or free agent status, with 82% of the top 100 players in the T20 Player Index now in this category. 40% of the world’s top T20 players no longer have central contracts with the top nine cricketing nations,” the report said.
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“Most of the best players in the world are now in hybrid/free agency markets. The percentages plotted above represent only centrally/nationally contracted players in the top 100 of the T20 Player Index. Nearly 18% of all ‘traditional market’ players are from India, highlighting the restrictions imposed on these players to prevent participation in foreign domestic leagues,” it further stated.
Huge gap in international cricket performance. Countries ranked between 1-9 in the ICC list played 81.5 days of international cricket in 2021, while countries ranked between 10-20 played an average of 21.5 days, the report said.
There were 485 international matches in 2021 alone, 195 more than the 290 that took place in 2020 due to COVID-19, but still significantly less than the 522 games played around the world in 2019.
Mohammad Rizwan had the highest international cricket workload in 2021 with 80 calendar days, while Rishabh Pant with 75 days has the highest among Indians. In the middle, there is Joe Root with 78 days of cricket in 2021.
(With PTI inputs)
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