Source -
skysports.com
Paul Collingwood has admitted he is concerned that the huge amounts of money being ploughed into the game via Twenty20 could be sending the wrong message to aspiring youngsters.
England's current one-day international and Twenty20 captain believes the game's rulers need to tread carefully if they are to retain the integrity and respect that exists in all forms of the sport.
Collingwood and his colleagues will play for a million dollars per man in the first of five such games against West Indies later this year, bringing unprecedented riches to the players and the England and Wales Cricket Board.
And while the all-rounder is excited at the prospect, he is wary that young players will take up the game for reasons other than for the glory of winning, and, in particular, beating the Australians.
"In many ways it is a bit uncomfortable because I'm not going to turn the money down, obviously," he conceded. "This is an exciting opportunity and it's got a hell of a lot of positives as well.
"If youngsters see the direction cricket is going at the moment, I'm sure the participation in the game is going to go up which is good for the game.
"But when I was young I grew up wanting to play and win the Ashes and win a World Cup so it's a difficult one. We're going into the unknown in many ways.
"I've grown up all my life wanting to win the Ashes and I can honestly say I want to regain the Ashes again. Whether you'd get the spin-offs from winning the Ashes as you would get in this Twenty20 I don't honestly know, but we do want to win this game as well - it's a massive incentive to win it.
"There's a bigger picture in all this and we have to careful. The ICC somehow has to get Test cricket as lucrative as this because the maths don't really add up at the moment.
"You play a Twenty20 game and get all this money and you play Test cricket and you don't get a fraction of it. From the ICC's point of view they've got to really understand where they want to go with cricket in the next generation."
|
