Almost every cricketer of the world dreams to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL) as it is certainly a great platform to gain experience and it is quite lucrative in monetary terms as well. Many Australian players have also played in the league and some of them have even served as the captain of the IPL teams. However Michael Clarke, the former Australian cricketer, feels that because of IPL, the Australian cricketers have become softer or less aggressive towards the Indian players.
The former Australian skipper said that everybody is aware of the power of India in terms of finance whether it is at international level or domestic. The 39 years old cricketer feels that the cricketers of Australia and other teams as well went soft against Indians as they didn’t want to lose on their IPL contracts. As per him, the Aussies and other players are afraid of sledging Indian cricketers, especially Virat Kohli as they have to play along with them in April.
Michael Clarke further adds that many players want to play in IPL and they don’t sledge Virat as they want to get a good IPL contract. While speaking a chat show, Michael said that there was a time when Australian cricketers went very soft against Virat and other cricketers as they wanted to get selected for Bangalore so that they could earn $1 million in just six weeks. Clarke further added that this was the phase when Australian cricketers were not as aggressive as they used to be.
IPL 2020 was supposed to start from March 29 but it has been postponed till April 15 after there was considerable increase in the number of coronavirus patients in India as well as in the world. Taking a look at the present scenario, it won’t be wrong to say that there are strong chances of the tournament getting cancelled or postponed further.
Do you agree with what Michael Clarke said?