Pietersen warned Test future is in danger if he opts for Indian league

Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, risked a potential conflict with England's top players yesterday by stating his implacable opposition to their involvement in next April's Indian Premier League.

Kevin Pietersen has already expressed a wish to play in India's lucrative new Twenty20 competition, in which he could fairly anticipate making around GBP £300,000 for six weeks' work, even complaining that the West Indian captain, Chris Gayle, had been taunting him with text messages awash with $$$ signs. Clarke, though, is in no mood for compromise, insisting that England's centrally-contracted players must honour their terms of employment. Contracts run annually from September 1, and which with the addition of player endorsements take Pietersen's earnings beyond GBP £500,000 a year.


The IPL has guaranteed that it will regard international commitments as sacrosanct, but England's tour of the West Indies will be rescheduled between January and March, seemingly leaving a window for the IPL to take place in April 2009, allowing highly-coveted England players such as Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff to take part.

Clarke, at Lord's for the official launch of the domestic season, impatiently rubbished such suggestions, insisting that England had a right to impose rest periods upon their top players, and suggested that there would be a national outcry if they did not commit themselves entirely to preparing for next summer's Ashes series. It was not so long ago, he recalled, that Pietersen had been complaining of burnout.

"The West Indies tour will be earlier for the very simple reason that we would like to give the England players a break before the Ashes series," Clarke said. "The spectators in this country want to know that our players are fit, sharp and ready for the Ashes series. They want the England team in the best possible shape. That is what they are concerned about. "The reason we established central contracts was to enable the head coach to determine the amount of cricket played by England players. We have no reasons to change that structure. I can't see Peter Moores releasing a centrally-contracted England player just before the Ashes series. What if a player got injured in the IPL and couldn't play all summer. I am pretty sure that Moores will want them to rest and the country will want them to rest, too."

That invites the possibility that Pietersen - or other top England players - could be encouraged by agents and legal advisers to reject a new central contract unless his involvement in IPL is sanctioned. Pietersen would then play for England on a match-by-match basis, with his contract reverting to Hampshire, who have already agreed a compromise this season with Dimitri Mascarenhas, the first England player to sign for an IPL franchise. "It would free [Pietersen] up, and it's a risk he would take," Clarke said. "KP runs the risk as anybody does of losing his place. Employment contracts are not compulsory, but if you are not employed you run the risks. Cricket careers can come to an end as well as a beginning. Kevin Pietersen receives not insignificant rewards. We are putting on board significant rewards for winning series.

"People who turn up exhausted from the IPL not necessarily going to be in a position to help their fellows earn those rewards. Cricket is a team game. Thirty years ago, Tony Greig thought it was important to play in World Series Cricket and Ian Botham appeared to replace him from pretty much nowhere."

Clarke claimed to sense no mood of rebellion when he met the England team in Napier at the end of their successful Test series win against New Zealand. But Mascarenhas called yesterday for him to soften his stance. "I came to a compromise with Hampshire," he said. "It took me 11 years to play for England and I would never miss an England one-day international. The IPL is a huge tournament and it's not going to go away. Everybody else in the world is there. I think the ECB will have to reconsider."

Mascarenhas will play for Jaipur Royals, in the early stages of the inaugural tournament which runs from April 18 to June 1. Hampshire have accepted the realities of the situation with such little protest that they have even made Mascarenhas captain following Shane Warne's retirement from county cricket. If Pietersen makes a stance, however, he runs the risk in the ECB's eyes of becoming a pariah.

The ECB will hold emergency discussions about the future of its own Twenty20 tournament at Lord's on Wednesday. They make around GBP £10m from a single Test, whereas the income for an IPL franchise is about GBP £3m a year. "That puts it into perspective," said Clarke.

Nevertheless, isn't there a familiar theme here? England, the inventors of the game, have been so wary of developing its potential that it is India who are about to reap the rewards. "Nonsense," Clarke said. "We are more than prepared to ensure that our Twenty20 remains the most exciting domestic competition in the World."

He wants counties to be able to field three overseas players in Twenty20 from 2009, and understandably yearns for England players to get involved. A crowded international summer, not forgetting the need for those rest periods, makes that quite a task.