Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise owners are willing to contract their signed players for a 12-month period, instead of just for the IPL season, in order to ensure the player represents their own franchise even in other T20 leagues.
This comes after a number of IPL franchises have brought teams in other T20 leagues as well like the Abu Dhabi T20 league, Major League Cricket in the USA, and the upcoming T20 league in South Africa, which will begin in January next year.
Owners of Punjab Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders already own teams in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL).
In an interview, Venky Mysore, CEO of Indian Premier League side Kolkata Knight Riders, revealed that going forward, IPL franchises are open to the idea of signing a player for a 12-month period in a year.
"If it happened that way at some point in the future, that'd be great. What we want to create is a common platform, a system, and a culture that allows us to participate around the year - enhancing our brand, building our fan base, and providing opportunities for cricketers around the world. And in the process, you build hopefully a successful business around it," he told The Telegraph.
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"In an ideal world, sure—because that gives us the opportunity to make our vision and our strategy even stronger. If we were able to have X number of contracted players and were able to use them all in different leagues, I think that would be nirvana. Hopefully, someday it will happen. I wouldn't be surprised if it did," he added.
Under these new proposed conditions, a player, for example, Andre Russell, who represents KKR in the IPL, will play for the Knight Riders-owned franchise in the CPL and other leagues as well.
Mysore also indicated that the BCCI is willing to allow Indian players to play in overseas T20 leagues as well and is in process of figuring out what’s best for Indian cricket.
"Certainly, we're hoping that will happen at some point in the future. When we broach this topic, the BCCI says, 'Yeah, we have to figure out how to do something'.
I think they have an open mind. But they need to figure out what's best for Indian cricket and for Indian players. That's how they would be thinking about it, which is fair enough. Some very good minds would be applying their minds to this idea. If it all comes together, it'd be terrific,” he said.
