Young India sign on the dotted line

The biggest hurdle for the Indian Premier League has finally been cleared.

The biggest hurdle for the Indian Premier League (IPL) has finally been cleared. All the Indian cricketers — those currently on tour to Australia and those who were part of the World Twenty20 team — have signed on the dotted line and will be available for auction.

The players had been adopting a wait-and-watch policy over the last couple of weeks, where a few had issues with the money being offered while others were simply dejected for having not been given the icon status. “They have agreed to the conditions and are convinced that the $5million cap on each team’s spending capacity will ensure that there is a fair balance when the auction begins,” an IPL official said.

There was a further boost for IPL, when on the same day news came in that eight Australians — Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Andrew Symonds, Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Brett Lee and Nathan Bracken — had also signed up. “Their contracts have reached us,” the official said.

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Speculation had been rife over the kind of money being paid to the Aussies in comparison with the pay packets of players such as Irfan Pathan, Rohit Sharma, Sreesanth, RP Singh, Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag — all T20 championship stars. However, it has been learnt now that the Aussies — except for the likes of Shane Warne, Gilchrist and Ponting, will be paid on the same lines as their Indian counterparts.

As of now, Warne and MS Dhoni are the costliest cricketers, who will be floated on the auction window at a starting price of approximately $400,000. Others like Ponting and Gilchrist have been priced somewhere between $275,000 and $300,000. Indian cricketers — apart from the four icon players — have been priced in the range of $150,000 to $175,000, which is also the amount being offered to other top players such as Sanath Jayasuriya, Mahela Jayawardene, Chris Gayle and Mark Boucher.

Meanwhile, there is a discussion still on between team owners and IPL to include Sehwag and VVS Laxman as icon players.