While defending England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) decision to pull its players out of the IPL 2024 for national duty, captain Jos Buttler has said international cricket shouldn’t clash with the Indian T20 league.
A host of England cricketers including Buttler, Will Jacks, Reece Topley, Phil Salt, Sam Curran, Jonny Bairstow and Liam Livingstone left IPL right before the playoffs for a home T20I series against Pakistan.
England take on Pakistan in the first of the four T20s in Leeds on Wednesday.
“I said, ‘Look, as an England captain, my main priority is to be playing for England,'” Buttler told reporters on Tuesday.
“It’s my personal opinion that there shouldn’t be any international cricket that clashes with the IPL. I think that these games have been in the calendar for a long time. Of course, leading into a World Cup, your No. 1 priority is playing for England and performing for England. I feel like this is the best preparation,” he added.
Curran, who represented Punjab Kings in the IPL, said ECB’s decision made a lot of sense.
“It was a decision that was made, that it was probably the right thing for us all to come back. It was only fair for all franchise to lose a player each or so… it would have been quite harsh if some franchises got to keep a couple of players and then some didn’t,” the all-rounder, whose IPL team did not qualify for the play-offs, was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
IPL Governing Council chairman Arun Dhumal, said: “It was given as a commitment that they will be available for the entire tournament. It was indeed very unfortunate with the way things happened this time around.”
“Unfortunately, there was some change of guard at the ECB and so, the new people who took over did not know about the bilateral series they had planned, and they wanted to put their best team there. Due to that, the confusion arose,” he told Sportstar.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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