Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has made some strong comments regarding the auction of the under-19 and other uncapped players.
Since a number of young cricketers are expected to be sold in crores – especially considering India’s under-19 team won the World Cup – Sunil Gavaskar reckons a salary cap of 1 crore should have been placed on uncapped players to prevent the “easy money” from spoiling them.
The under-19 captain and vice-captain pair of Yash Dhull and Shaik Rasheed, pace-bowling all-rounders Raj Bawa and Rajvardhan Hangargekar are some of the under-19 World Cup stars who are expected to fetch multiple crores in the mega-auction at the weekend.
In his column for Mid-Day, Sunil Gavaskar wrote: “The mega auction will happen over the weekend and some of our Under-19 boys could become crorepatis in a few blinks of the eye. Doing well at the under-19 level doesn’t guarantee success at the IPL or even international level as has been seen over the years. The difference in standards is huge.”
Sunil Gavaskar asserted that in the past a number of young cricketers who showed promise faded in the light of money. He believes that youngsters should work harder to earn big prices.
“Far too many get carried away and lose focus and are out of the game or seek the mirage of greener-looking pastures. The fair thing would be to put a limit of say Rs 1 crore for uncapped players so that they know that to go further and earn more they have a lot of hard work ahead.
“Easy money has spoilt many a promising talent and that’s something the administrators can prevent by ensuring that an uncapped player remains eager to keep performing year after year and not fall by the wayside as so many have done in the past,” the respected commentator added.
The mega-auction is scheduled for Febraury 12 and 13 in Bangalore where 590 players will go under the hammer – of those, 228 are capped, 355 are uncapped players and 7 belong to Associate Nations.
