Ben Stokes and Tymal Mills earning million pound salaries is great for cricket

– it’s exactly what game needs

Ben Stokes                                                                  Tymal Mills

I was at Yorkshire training on Monday and the talk of nets was not Ben Stokes earning £1.7m in the IPL but Tymal Mills. It was all tongue in cheek but the players were saying ‘do we just focus on T20 now’ after hearing Mills had landed a £1.4m IPL contract.

A good county player earns around £100,000 but the majority about £70,000, slogging through the winter after winter, working hard in April through to September playing four-day cricket, 50 over and Twenty20. They could not dream of earning £1.4m in a career let alone six weeks like Mills.

The game is kidding itself if it thinks players, and kids in particular, will not be focusing on Twenty20. There are just too many great leagues around the world these days. Look at what happened in Australia this winter. Australia played South Africa before the Big Bash. It was a great spectacle, good Test series to watch and attracted crowds. Then Pakistan arrived and the Big Bash started. The crowds for international cricket dwindled. The Perth Scorchers played a game on a pitch that was used by the international team two days later. That is unheard of. The Perth Scorchers sold out. The Waca was three quarters full for Australia v Pakistan.