Melbourne, May 3
Riding on his superb bowling performances during a brief stint in the Indian Premier League (IPL), pace spearhead Brett Lee emerged as the richest Australian cricketer from the tournament and returned home with 80,000 dollars per scalp for his four wickets.
At the auction, Lee was bought for 9,00,000 dollars and he took home more than 3,20,000 dollars in his four matches with Kings XI Punjab.
Meanwhile, captain Ricky Ponting, who had a poor outing with the Kolkata Knight Riders in the tournament, returned home as the richest Australian batsman after earnings were worked out on a dollars-per-runs-scored basis.
Ponting was roped in for a modest 4,00,000 dollars and earned 3,663 dollars for every run that he scored in the four matches that he played.
He scored 39 runs, which also included two golden ducks, and took home 1,42,000 dollars. However, Ponting admitted that he would have liked to score more runs saying that his impact “wasn’t that great”, according to The Australian newspaper.
The World-Cup-winning captain also voiced his concern that the temptation to play in the IPL could end up ruining international cricket as we know it.
“There’s a real danger there that international players might just see the glitz and glamour of this event and not want to play international cricket any more, which I don’t think would be great for the game,” Ponting was quoted as saying by The Australian.
All-rounder Andrew Symonds, who was the highest paid foreign player at the auction, became richer by 5,00,000 dollars after making just four appearances with the Hyderabad Deccan Chargers.
Symonds pocketed 3,000 dollars for each of his 161 runs.
Opener Matthew Hayden (1,34,000 dollars) and Michael Hussey (1,25,000 dollars) both brought home more for two weeks' work than most Australians get for two years.
Simon Katich, who played just two matches for Kings XI
Punjab, fetched only 2,00,000 dollars at the auction but earned 60,000 dollars for his efforts.
— UNI
