Malcolm Speed

So we see $4 million in the IPL, $890,000 in the $100,000, $400,000 in Australia.

And the numbers go down.

As you work your way down the list, the numbers in Australia are correspondingly lower than in the other leagues.

So, and we look at South Africa, we look at the USA, Pakistan, West Indies, they've all got their own leagues and they're all competing for the same player pool.

Now, the issue there is, is it important to Australia to have players

a strong 2020 league?

Or can we just sit back and say, look, we're not going to get into a player payment war here.

We're just going to take, we'll take the best players who want to play in our league at our level.

We'll keep the player payments at about the same level and we'll do the best we can and see where that leaves us.

I think that's dangerous.

If that happens, and I'm right about 2020 being the dominant form of cricket, I think Australia needs to keep up.

Australia needs to be able to make sure its own players play in our 2020 league, make sure that we get our fair share of the top foreign players who are available without breaking the bank.

We need to keep up with the other leagues.

And we'll offer things in Australia that some of the other leagues can't offer that will appeal to players, but we need to keep up.

Now, how do we do that?

The next media rights deal for cricket doesn't occur until 2031, so we're five years away from that.

So there's not going to be a big influx of money from media rights if there's going to be any increase at all.

And the media companies, as usual, are playing down the market, saying the market's tough.

But I think it is pretty tough and things have changed.

So this comes along at a time, a difficult time for Cricket Australia, where the England Cricket Board has sold the 100, sold...