Ranji Trophy will remain poor cousin of IPL: Gavaskar

Batting great Sunil Gavaskar on Saturday said that Ranji Trophy will remain a 'poor cousin' of the cash-rich Indian Premier League until the player's match fee in the country's premier first-class tournament is substantially increased.

A player now gets approximately ₹ 2.5 lakh per match in the Ranji Trophy, a far cry from the meagre salary the cricketers would withdraw not long ago, but still the amount is no match to the millions the IPL stars earn.

"IPL dominates Ranji Trophy. Unless their match fees are increased substantially, it will be considered an orphan and poor cousin of Indian cricket," Gavaskar said.

"I think 26 per cent of the BCCI revenue goes to the the players, out of which 13 per cent goes to the international players, 10 percent goes to domestic cricket, 1.5 to junior, 1.5 to women's cricket. That has not really been increased over the past few years barring the Test cricketers."

Gavaskar said there is too much disparity between the earnings of a first-class cricketer and an IPL recruit.

"I am hoping new president Sourav Ganguly will look into this. The disparity that you see between IPL players, who don't always play first class cricket, and those who play all the domestic games, about 80 days and somebody who plays 14 days of IPL."

"There is big disparity. I am talking about the uncapped players. Hopefully that will be narrowed down as much as possible."

On ICC's proposal to trim Test cricket to four days from five, he added: "What I think doesn't matter. It is what the current players think that matters. They should be consulted before BCCI takes a call."

The legendary batsman, who captained India to the famous 1985 Benson & Hedges World Series triumph in Australia, was speaking during the 26th Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture in the national capital.