Will Australian Players Boycott IPL 4?

New Delhi: Question mark hovers over Australia players' participation in fourth edition of the Indian Premier League after the Indian board decided to remit 10% of foreign players' auction fee to their national boards.

The governing council of the IPL had earlier decided to keep the players' agents away from the cash-rich Twenty20 extravaganza and give a cut of the players' fees to the boards of the countries they come from.

The decision of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) irked the Australian players as chief executive of Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) Paul Marsh voiced displeasure over the decision.

Few hours after the BCCI's decision, Marsh told that the ACA would ask the players not to sign the IPL contracts.

"The ACA has made it known to CA that any attempt to take 10%, or any other amount for that matter, from the IPL salaries of Australian players is completely unacceptable and will be opposed in the strongest possible way by us," Marsh reportedly said in a statement.

CA simply has no right to effectively charge a 'commission' on income earned by players from outside their employment to CA. This is akin to an employer trying to take 10% of an employee's wages from a second job he works on weekends. Regardless of the decision made by the IPL, we would hope that CA would act in good faith to its players by not taking this proposed 10.