Ravi Shastri disagrees with England great Mike Atherton over IPL growth

Ravi Shastri believes the Indian Premier League and the money it generates is key to helping cricket “survive”.

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Former India head coach Ravi Shastri believes the Indian Premier League (IPL) is crucial to the future of cricket, insisting it is needed to “keep the game alive”.

Players are able to earn huge amounts of money in the IPL and Shastri believes the cash generated by the tournament can be used to help develop grassroots cricket.

Speaking to Indian broadcaster NDTV, Shastri said: “I think the IPL is extremely important. I don’t care what people think. IPL is the cash cow for your other formats to survive.

“You have got to get that in place and then earn the bucks, get it into the coffers and then spread it around to different formats of the game, at grassroots level, at domestic cricket level, to keep the game alive.”

Former England captain Michael Atherton, however, is concerned about the continued expansion of the IPL and the effect it will have on the other formats of the game.

Two new teams will be added to the league next year, which will result in more games being played and Atherton believes there is simply not enough space in the schedule for more cricket.

Writing in a column for The Times, Atherton explained: “There will be adverse knock-on effects. The calendar cannot contain the competing demands of international and franchise cricket as it is now, with a two-month window allotted for the IPL.

“India will want a longer window and, who knows, maybe the owners will eventually want a second station carved out of the schedule.

“Cricketers will follow the money, if the market is left unchecked, and the least profitable aspects of the game will suffer — notably Test cricket among countries with small television markets.

“An imbalance of revenues, and the intense gravitational pull of IPL, puts stress on a game ill-equipped to withstand it.

“The advance of the IPL, and its satellite tournaments, will be hard to stop, but sport that exists only to create return for investors will lose the precious elements that hinder rather than help the bottom line.”