Former captain Ian Chappell says Cricket Australia (CA) should reject any moves from senior players to participate in a rescheduled Indian Premier League, if it clashes with domestic cricket in this country.
With the possible postponement or cancellation of the T20 World Cup, due to be played in Australia in October-November, Indian officials have been angling for the IPL to be moved into that slot.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is due to discuss the issue next week, although the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is desperate for the IPL to go ahead, given it's worth about $800 million in revenue.
The IPL is normally played in April-May, when it doesn't clash with domestic cricket in Australia, but any move to October-November would be a direct conflict with the usual dates of the Australian domestic summer.
The likes of Steve Smith, David Warner and Pat Cummins all have rich IPL contracts, with Cummins' deal with Kolkata Knight Riders worth $3.2m.
Cummins yesterday told SEN Radio that he was "really looking forward to playing it for many obvious reasons, hopefully it goes ahead."
According to Chappell, players on large CA contracts should be giving the IPL a miss in favour of supporting the local competition.
"Well this is coming from someone who's never been a fan of the board, but the top players are looked after very well by Cricket Australia these days, so I think there's an obligation there," Chappell told Wide World of Sports.
"It's also a chance to stand up and say the cricket world isn't going to be pushed around by India.
"I could mount a case more for a peripheral player who doesn't earn a lot of money in Australia; if the bulk of his income is going to come from the IPL, well that's something I would have some sympathy for if I was a CA board member.
"But the top players are well paid, and that argument doesn't hold any water. Their obligation should be to Australia."
Chappell, who captained Australia in 30 of his 75 Tests, says there's little doubt the IPL will take over the T20 World Cup dates, if the ICC tournament can't go ahead due to coronavirus.
"The first thing you know is that the BCCI will win," he said.
"They'll get their way if they want to play in October. At this point it appears to me that the chances of the T20 World Cup going ahead are somewhere between Buckley's and none.
"With so many countries, I just think it would be logistically way too difficult, but that's purely a cricketer talking, not a medical person or someone with experience running a tournament like that.
"But it seems to me with 16 teams to worry about it's probably going to be too hard, and if the BCCI want the IPL to take that slot they'll probably get their way."
One factor for CA to consider should there be a clash would be the fact that the BCCI doesn't allow the top Indian players to participate in the Big Bash.
Chappell dismissed the theory that if CA prevented its top players from heading to the IPL then the BCCI would retaliate by pulling out of this summer's Test series in Australia.
He said any attempt by India to pressure CA should be given short shrift.
"Well the BCCI might try to retaliate, but it would be pretty stupid, because apart from Australia and India there aren't too many good Test-playing countries," he said.
"To me, bully-boy tactics never work long-term, they might work in the short-term, but that's it.
"It's time someone in the cricket world had the guts to stand up to India and say 'if that's the way you want to play, that's fine, we'll find someone else.'
"Sure it would be a whole lot of money down the drain, which at this stage would be difficult to swallow, but this is an opportunity to show the rest of the cricket world that there's somebody prepared to stand up to India, and it's time that a bit of common sense came into the scheduling."
Chappell pointed out that such a boycott of Australia would be unlikely to be supported by Indian captain Virat Kohli, and coach Ravi Shastri.
"I'm not convinced that India would go down that route," he said.
"I don't know the thinking of the BCCI board, but I think if they tried that on, they'd get serious kickback from Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri.
"Kohli strikes me as the sort of player who wants to challenge himself at every opportunity. He beat Australia here last time, he wouldn't want to throw away the opportunity to now beat a full-strength Australian team.
"I think Kohli would be mightily pissed off if the Indian board went down that route.
"I also know Ravi pretty well, and I know how competitive he is."
CA is reportedly considering cutting the Sheffield Shield competition to eight rounds, down from the usual 10, in a bid to save money in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's a plan that's been met with opposition, with Test opener Joe Burns one of those calling for the competition to be left alone.
But Chappell doesn't see what the fuss is about.
"I don't see a cut to eight rounds being a great disaster," he said.
"I played most of my career with an eight game competition, before Tasmania joined the Shield, and that produced plenty of decent Test cricketers.
"If you go back to the early days of Bradman's career, they only played six games, and again, they didn't do so bad.
"If I was a player I wouldn't be jumping up and down about eight games."
Chappell said quality, not necessarily quantity, is the most important factor, again highlighting the desire to have Australia's senior players participate in the Sheffield Shield rather than the IPL.
"The key is how many of those games you get with the top players," he said.
"That's been the problem with the Shield competition for a long time now, and the international program has caused much of the problems.
"I think if it's well promoted and the top players are there, CA might get a surprise at how many people are interested and wanted to watch, especially when there's been so little sport of late.
"By that stage you might be allowed a crowd of 2000, and you could easily space them out and satisfy the social distancing regulations.
"It would be an opportunity to really promote it, and it could be a winning situation if Cricket Australia use it wisely."
from WWOS http://wwos.nine.com.au/cricket/ian-chappell-calls-for-australian-stars-to-forgo-ipl-millions-exclusive/a96a3396-3260-4eef-b268-0c711bc62dfe
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