Australian cricket is about to face a major change in it's contractual shape when the new contracts are announced after the tour of the West Indies. And it is about time that Cricket Australia changed how it does contracts.
I have no problem with players being payed for the effort they put in for their country but I have a problem with players being contracted to a national team that is picked on merit. Has anyone thought that this might be what is hurting Australian cricket? How many times have players been put on big contracts and then their career falls away and they get paid a lot of money playing 1st class cricket without any chance of ever playing for their country again. Instead why don't Cricket Australia look at paying higher match payments and pay bonuses on performance. If a player has to play well and win to get a good payday I am sure you will start seeing more consistent and high standard performances.
Then you will also take away the possibility that a player is only selected due to the fact of how much his contract is worth. This is a very similar scenario that Australian Rugby is in and it is not helping them. If a player is contracted on a large percentage of the income then there must be a lot of pressure from those paying the bill for that player to be in as many games as possible due to influences of sponsors who put the money in the kitty.
Contracts are needed in the modern sporting world but it does not meant that you have to throw large money at players for things they have not achieved yet. Just because a player performed well last series it does not guarantee they will perform highly again. Surely it would not be hard to work out a structured reward payment system in a game where rain affected results can be decided by a mathematical system that most know nothing about and understand little about it's formula.
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