New Zealand could be forced to use UK-based club cricketers for their two warm-up matches here in May with up to nine players, including the captain, Brendon McCullum, given permission to arrive only two days before the first Test at Lord’s because of their Indian Premier League commitments.
McCullum, Kane Williamson, Trent Boult and Tim Southee, who all featured in the crushing eight-wicket World Cup win over England in Wellington last Friday, are among those given the maximum amount of time possible to play in the lucrative IPL, which runs for six and a half weeks and finishes on 24 May – three days after the two-Test series begins.
New Zealand Cricket says it has been powerless to prevent its biggest-name players arriving as late as 18 May – after the fixtures against Somerset and Worcestershire – for fear of affecting their attractiveness to the eight IPL franchises. The fast bowler Boult, for example, picked up a £400,000 deal to play for Sunrisers Hyderabad in last week’s IPL auction – a sum that would have been greatly reduced had his availability been cut.
NZC says it has no issue with the players but did try to persuade the England and Wales Cricket Board to move the series back or play the five one-day internationals that follow first. The ECB declined the requests for fear of affecting its own preparation for the Ashes series with Australia later in the summer.
“Clearly it is not ideal preparation for us,” a NZC spokesperson told the Dominion Post newspaper. “The make-up of our team for the warm-up matches will be a combination of Test squad players, IPL players out early and players in England with other responsibilities, be that county cricket or league cricket.
“But the bottom line is some of our players have the chance to participate in the IPL and, in order to be picked up, we had to allow them a playing window. If we had truncated that, it would have reduced their marketability,” he added. “They can earn money in the IPL that we can’t contemplate paying them.”
The ECB has made one concession, with the four-day match at Worcestershire, which starts on 14 May, downgraded from first-class status to allow those New Zealand players given an early release from their IPL teams to be substituted into the fixture mid-game.
