"If fee can be doubled or tripled...": Gavaskar urges BCCI to look at incentive scheme in Ranji Trophy

At the beginning of March, BCCI announced the Test Cricket Incentive Scheme which will serve as an additional reward structure on top of the existing match fee for Test matches, set at INR 15 lakh.

Players who play more than seven matches (more than 75 per cent) of matches will be given an incentive of Rs 45 lakhs per match on being included in playing eleven or Rs 22 lakh per match if not included in playing eleven and those who will play 50 per cent of the matches will be given the incentive of Rs 30 lakh per match.

Gavaskar urged the BCCI to apply such a scheme in the Ranji Trophy which will encourage domestic players.

"That is a wonderful thing by the BCCI to reward those who would be playing [Test cricket]. But I would also request the BCCI to ensure that the feeder to the Test team, which is the Ranji Trophy, is also looked after," Gavaskar said on the sidelines of an event in Mumbai as quoted from ESPNcricinfo.

"If the Ranji Trophy fee can be doubled or tripled, certainly there will be a lot more people playing the Ranji Trophy, [and a] lot less pullouts. They will all be wanting to play with the slab system - [if] every ten first-class matches you get that much more - so I would request the BCCI to look at that aspect as well," he added.

As of now if a player plays a match in Ranji Trophy they earn Rs 2 lakh. If the player goes on to play every match and the team reaches the final then that player would play 10 matches.

In the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the match fee is Rs 50,000, and in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy, it is Rs 17,500.

"[If your team doesn't qualify for the knockouts], your whole year's earnings are around 20 lakh, which is like the base price in the IPL. If there are proper contracts, then players will feel more motivated to play red-ball cricket," a domestic player told ESPNcricinfo.

Gavaskar went on to suggest a re-examination of the short gaps between Ranji Trophy matches and recommended that the Ranji Trophy should be played from October to mid-December.

"That way, everybody will be available to play [the Ranji Trophy], except for the ones featuring for India. There will be no real excuse to pull out. With the one-dayers beginning from January, people who are in the IPL can have enough practice from them," Gavaskar said.

He also backed the BCCI's decision to prioritise domestic cricket after some players didn't participate in the recently concluded Ranji Trophy despite being available.

"It is something that should be looked up [to] by every cricketer - domestic cricket is actually how they have come up. If they had not started at the domestic level, be it the domestic T20, the domestic one-day tournament or the Ranji Trophy, they wouldn't be where they are," he said.

"Very few cricketers have actually come up from not having played domestic cricket. They always have played some domestic cricket - it could be junior cricket or Under-19 cricket or something like that. That is something the players should never forget," he added. (ANI)