Australia speedster Mitchell Starc faces a growing legal fight to recover $1.53 million that he had lost after missing 2018 IPL season owing to injury.
Starc, 29, filed a lawsuit in the Victorian County Court in April against the insurers of his lucrative deal to play for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the cash-rich T20 tournament.
Starc was bought by KKR in the 2018 auction for a whopping INR 9.4 Crore but the left-arm pacer failed to bowl a delivery during the competition as he broke down with leg injury in the preceding series against South Africa, which was marred by the ball-tampering scandal.
According to court documents, Starc had taken out a policy that would pay him 1.53 million dollars benefit if he missed the IPL season through injury. Represented by Mills Oakley lawyers, Starc is suing a syndicate of Lloyd's of London – the long-running insurance market where coverage can be bought for unique circumstances.
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However, in documents lodged in May, Clyde and Co lawyers, representing Lloyd's of London, declared Starc did not "meet the policy requirements for payment of the total disablement benefit" and refused that Starc "suffered total disablement as a result of a bodily injury as defined by the policy contract".
"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.
Starc's bid for payment also included a statement from Australian team doctor Richard Saw. Mills Oakley responded last month to a request for more information, raising a number of objections to Lloyd's of London's requests.
The writ states that Starc paid a premium of 97,920 dollars to be covered between February 27 and March 31 in 2018, when the Indian Premier League ended.
As per Starc, he started feeling pain in his right calf while bowling during the second test in Port Elizabeth on March 10. The injury worsened in the third Test, when he "suffered was a grade three tibial injury which involved a fracture in his right tibial bone".
Mills Oakley and Clyde and Co lawyers did not react to comment. The Australian Cricketers Association also did not wish to respond.
A trial has been listed for three days from March 30 next year.
(Inputs from Sydney Morning Herald)
