Australia may ban top plays from playing in IPL!

House divided.

That’s Australian cricket beneath the veneer. The Indian Premier League (IPL) moolah has done the seemingly impossible and Australian cricket is grappling with a crisis that threatens to leave the game in tatters Down Under.

The situation became so grave that Cricket Australia, struggling to maintain its authority, warned it might ban top players from playing in the IPL.

It has been an exasperating time for the Australia fans. The cash-rich IPL, BCCI’s ambitious money-milking project, has hit Australian cricket like a hurricane and the result is before us to see.

Andrew Symonds, as if he had not problems enough, now faces disciplinary action for his remarks in an unpublished column. Symonds believes he has a right to earn fast buck and complaints how Cricket Australia was coming in the way.

Ricky Ponting too admits the IPL has become a distraction enough to influence of the team’s performance.

The team looks divided, even though Ponting claimed that his teammates, with the lone exception of Adam Gilchrist, were not concern about IPL.

Ponting’s assertion notwithstanding, the lure of the moolah is too tempting and Ponting himself knows it better. Deep inside, every Australian cricket is craving for the money, which puts Cricket Australia on a tricky wicket.

But the Board does not deserve sympathy, because their predicament is their own making. They have been the partner-in-crime of the Indian cricket board in a venture which treats the game as a mere commodity, its practitioners’ slaves and the followers a bunch of sadists who derive perverse pleasure from a slogathon.

In the coming days, the crisis would only deepen. If Australia has been hit today, tomorrow it might be South Africa’s turn. And some other country the day after.

BCCI has become a monster that is not only usurping ICC’s authority but also scrambling after money, whatever be the cost. Cricket has never looked in more trouble.