IPL to pull stars away from Sheffield Shield final as international fixture blurs together

Domestic cricket’s centrepiece could face yet another threat as IPL dates due to crossover with Australia’s biggest non-international cricket match.

Once billed as the most important non-international cricket match on the calendar, the Sheffield Shield final is set to be marginalised further with top Australian players likely to prioritise the start of the Indian Premier League season over the domestic decider.

Reports out of India have flagged that an expanded IPL season will run from March 22 until late May, although the exact dates hinge on the finalisation of Indian election dates.

As things stand though, the early days of the Twenty20 extravaganza are on a collision course with the Shield final, which runs from March 21 to 25.

With six Australians – headlined by Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins – having been picked up in Tuesday night’s mini-auction in Dubai, 18 Aussies are currently on IPL lists for 2024, with several others in contention to be signed as replacement players.

Historically, the only reason top Australian players haven’t played in Shield finals is if they have been on tour with the national side, a common occurrence in recent decades.

In 2008, a star-studded NSW team featuring Michael Clarke, Brett Lee, Stuart Clark, Nathan Bracken, Phil Jaques, Simon Katich, Stuart MacGill and Brad Haddin beat Victoria at the SCG to claim what was then the Pura Cup, however that sort of collection of talent has been the exception rather than the rule.

Some of Australia’s most exciting prospects – such as WA all-round young gun Aaron Hardie – might find themselves unavailable for Australian domestic cricket’s biggest game in coming years. Picture: James Worsfold/Getty Images.

With Australia’s tour of New Zealand concluding with the end of the second Test in Christchurch on March 12, there is theoretically a window for Aussie Test players to feature in the Shield final.

While Tasmania and Western Australia currently hold the top two spots on the Shield table, a logjam means all six states are still in the hunt to make the final.

But senior state cricket sources spoken to on Wednesday said that while they expected there would be a level of consultation in the event of a clash, the IPL was likely to win out.

It is not without precedent, as the likes of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cummins missed the 2020-21 Shield final, held in April of 2021 because of the pandemic, as they were in India during what was an eventually suspended IPL season.

The tension between Australian domestic commitments and global franchise competitions has been laid bare in recent seasons, with veteran Matthew Wade skipping some Tasmanian matches last summer while playing short-form cricket in South Africa and Pakistan.

The memorandum of understanding signed between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association earlier this year has provisions that allow players to be docked money off their central contracts commensurately with how much franchise cricket they play that clashes with the Australian domestic season.

There is financial incentive for CA to play ball with the IPL though given the Australian body makes a cut from every Australian IPL contract.

The fact Australia doesn’t play another Test after the NZ tour until late in 2024 means there is an argument that players are better served heading to the IPL to hone their T20 skills ahead of June’s World Cup in that format.

World Cup-winning all-rounder Marcus Stoinis, who is on the books of the Lucknow Super Giants, said he would like to keep playing Shield cricket but not at the expense of franchise tournaments.

“I enjoyed playing it last year,’ Stoinis told this masthead.

“I mean don’t think I’d say no. As long as ideally it doesn’t get to a stage where you have to choose that you either only play state cricket and you’re not allowed to play some level tournaments because obviously that’s where my main skill set is. So yeah, so if the landscape was quite flexible, and it meant that I could come and play in a Shield team, or one day fixture for Western Australia then yeah, I definitely would be.”

Originally published as IPL to pull stars away from Sheffield Shield final as international fixture blurs together