Melbourne: Australian cricketers who had signed up for the Indian Premier League will play for just two weeks in the lucrative Twenty20 tournament after Cricket Australia decided to organise a training camp in early May ahead of their team's West Indies tour.
Players will assemble at Queensland for a six-day camp before departing for West Indies on May 8, and this means that the cricketers signed up with IPL franchises would earn about a third of their bid amounts, Herald Sun reported.
Coach Tim Nielsen is not concerned about the CA-contracted players, including Andrew Symonds, Ricky Ponting and Brett Lee, taking part in the April 18-June 1 Twenty20 competition, but he wants a five or six-day camp to fine-tune his players for the West Indies tour. The Australians, who begin with a tour match from May 16-18, will play three Tests, a Twenty20 encounter and then three one-day internationals in the Caribbean. The first Test begins on May 30 in in Jamaica.
