'Who is the IPL's best bowler? His name is Jasprit Bumrah. He gets Rs 12 crore and Starc almost 25. That's wrong.'
The IPL 2024 auction created headlines with Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders splurging a massive Rs 45.25 crore (Rs 452.5 million) on Australian pace duo Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins.
Aakash Chopra, the former Indian cricketer, questioned the exorbitant paychecks for Starc and Cummins compared to India's top stars.
In a YouTube video, Chopra highlighted the contrast in earnings between foreign players like Starc and Cummins and Indian stars like Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah.
He highlighted the discrepancy where Bumrah, acknowledged as the world's best bowler and IPL's standout performer, receives considerably less than Starc.
'If Mitchell Starc plays all 14 games and bowls his full quota of four overs, each ball will cost Rs 760,000. Astonishing. But here's a question. Who is the world's best bowler? Who is the IPL's best bowler?
'His name is Jasprit Bumrah. He gets Rs 12 crore and Starc almost 25. That's wrong,' said Chopra.
Chopra suggested a potential solution to address this apparent disparity by implementing a cap on the spending capacity for overseas players. He proposed a scenario where a team has a fixed budget, and a specified portion is allocated for Indian players, promoting financial parity.
'One solution to this is to put a cap on the money kept for overseas players. For example -- if you have a purse of Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) to assemble a team, out of which 1.5 or 1.75 (1.5 billion or Rs 1.75 billion) is for Indian players, and the remaining for foreigners,' Chopra said.
'When this happens, it will give you parity, which right now doesn't exist.'
