Wellington, Jun 2 : The New Zealand Players’ Association is mooting a potential boycott of Champions League in September by Auckland as they await unpaid prize money from last year’s edition.
NZCPA boss Heath Mills is irked that up to 250,000 dollars of prize money is still owed to Central Districts from last year’s event in South Africa due to Indian red tape, and will urge Auckland’s players to think twice about attending this year’s qualifying tournament.
“We’ll be negotiating the player terms for that event through FICA and there’s no way we’ll be recommending players go until there’s some sort of up-front payment of participation fees. Even though they were paid, they were 4-5 months late,” Mills said.
“They will need to be paid up front and have some sort of stronger guarantee around the level of prize money, given it’s part of the total package. That’s a significant issue,” The Dominion Post quoted him, as saying.
Auckland earned the right to take on the world’s best teams by winning the New Zealand Twenty20 league in January. But, unlike Otago in 2009 and Central Districts last year, Auckland will need to go through a qualifying tournament, which is likely to be in Sri Lanka in mid-September.
Auckland Cricket chief executive Andrew Eade confirmed they were preparing to play a yet-to-be-announced qualifying tournament against the Sri Lanka and West Indies champions, and the fourth-placed IPL team, the Kolkata Knight Riders.
The top-two will progress to a 10-team tournament against three top IPL sides, two each from Australia and South Africa, and the England champions.
© ANI
