Earlier this month, Heinrich Klaasen shocked the cricketing world by announcing his international retirement. The 33-year-old had left the longest format of the sport, Test cricket, in 2024. Despite being seen as one of the best white-ball batters, Klaasen decided franchise cricket was the way to go for him.
A late bloomer, Klaasen only enjoyed international success for a couple of years. But he didn’t play for the Big 3 nations. This meant Cricket South Africa couldn’t pay him much. Knowing this, he chose the more financially sound route, keeping his family and future in mind.
Klaasen’s advice to ICC
Nicholas Pooran did something similar, foreshadowing what’s about to come as franchise cricket becomes a force. Klaasen thinks more and more players will go towards this route in the years to come. And he thinks the International Cricket Council (ICC) can do something about it to preserve international cricket.
“I think the only change that I will make (to the cricket calendar) is probably take (bilateral) one-day cricket away from international cricket. Make it more Test matches for teams that don’t play a lot of Test matches. Play more T20 cricket, because that’s what the people want to see. You can keep your one-day World Cups, and just maybe a month before the one-day World Cup starts, you play five games for every team, just to get used to that format,” he told Cricbuzz.
Players need more incentives
The wicketkeeper batter stated that we see fewer players from Australia and England leaving international cricket behind because their cricket bodies pay them handsomely. Mitchell Starc for example, didn’t play in the Indian Premier League (IPL) from 2016 to 2023 and prioritised playing for Australia.
“It’s not a big change that you have to make in that format. It’s more the international teams that you probably will struggle with. If they don’t take care of the international players, they will go out and go to the leagues to make some extra cash. If you look at the Aussies and the England boys, they get looked after well, so they don’t need to go around the world and go play all these leagues,” he added.
Klaasen thinks the ICC needs to shell out a little more from its pocket to ensure players from other nations stay around. He thinks we won’t have as many all-format players, who are already a handful now.
“So it’s going to be on the ICC to go like we need certain players, so we need to actually fork out a little bit more money for them to make sure they are well rested. I don’t think it’s sustainable for players to play all the leagues and all formats. So you will have more players that place a certain amount importance to certain formats. The all-format players can’t play leagues, and they can’t play all the formats for the international team, they will just burn out,” Klaasen concluded.
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