Pieter$en to play in the IPL next year?

Kevin Pietersen's interview to the Daily Mail last week is sure to shake up the ECB. He has apparently been approached with a £ 2 million offer for a three year contract with one of the franchisees.

Since the ECB does not yet allow its centrally contracted players to play in the Indian Premier League, he does have the option of turning down an ECB contract offer so that he can play when and where he wants. Unlike other cricketers, he can be pretty safe in the knowledge that the absence of a central contract won't result in him not being considered for selection.

Yet, it's funny how his views have changed over the last year, like Will Luke too points out. Sample this chronology of quotes:

• June 2007 (during West Indies' tour of England):
  'Burnout could cut short my career.'
  
• October 2008 (during England's tour of Sri Lanka):
  'When I said I was tired in the summer nobody said anything to me, nobody backed me at all.'
  
• Feb 2008:
  'I know there is interest and, yes, there have been offers, etc etc, but it's not something I'm particularly interested in.'
  
• April 2008:
  'You want your best players playing both for their country and for the IPL. You don't want them choosing between the two. It's silly to think that you're losing up to a million over six weeks.'
  
• May 2008:
  'I am disappointed and irritated that England players have been stopped going so far, and I definitely want to go next year.'

It can be no-one's case that playing in the IPL is like a walk in the park. From what I've seen, these Twenty20 games need as much, if not more, focus as one-day internationals primarily because the situation changes so rapidly, on a ball-by-ball basis. In a fifty over game, you can recover from 60/4 and put up (or defend) a 250-260 score. In Twenty20, under most circumstances, you might as well concede the game at that stage.

So clearly players will experience burnout of some nature or the other. Obviously the money is good. But in today's cricketing setup, appearances for country and sponsorship deals are the only avenues for players to make money from their skills (and looks!). So, it can be no-one's case that players are mercenaries by playing for money.

Yet, like the chronology indicates, Pietersen has been far from consistent in his take on the IPL. He can't complain of burnout and sign on the IPL dotted line!

My take on there being too much cricket is that players always have the option of opting out of series. Typically the only players you'll see complaining about too much cricket are those that play the most often, and hence are the 'star' players. Surely they've performed well enough to risk skipping a game or a series and not face a piquant situation where they won't be included next time around. Also, if a sufficiently large number of players keep opting out of tournaments, cricket administrators will realize that they may be doing a lot of damage to the golden geese.

Labels: burnout, fatigue, indian premier league, ipl 2008, pietersen, twenty20