IPL franchises not pleased about BCCI's decision to reveal player salaries

“The salary of players as per their contract with their former teams will be protected. The upper limit will be deducted from the total purse of Rs 66 crore. All will be put up on the website,” IPL Chairman Rajeev Shukla told a media conference after the draft.

But according to a report published in ESPNcricinfo, the IPL franchises are not too excited about the prospect of player's salaries being publicly revealed at the end of the first trading window on December 31.

Since the introduction of the retention system in 2010, a lot of franchise did not pay exactly the same amount of money, which was deducted from their auction budget, while retaining a player. Kasi Viswanathan, one of the stakeholders in CSK, said that the franchises would hate to reveal their business secrets.

"This is a business proposition. Why would they want to let out trade secrets?" he was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

Another unnamed franchise official insisted that revealing the salaries will not only create rift inside the dressing room, but will also allow other teams to exploit the loopholes in the contract, and persuade players to leave the team.

"Why should everyone know what price he has been retained? If other franchises come to know of what a player is being paid, they might try to pick holes in the contract and dissuade the player from signing a contract. You know how these things work.

“It will also create a lot of unpleasantness in the team. Some foreigner maybe as good as or better than a retained player, but he might be miffed if he doesn't get the same amount or more in the auction," the unnamed official told ESPNcricinfo.

However, another unnamed source of ESPNcricinfo, a former franchise official, believes that revealing the salaries will not be a big issue for most of the teams, except for some case of player retention.

"The inequalities of salaries exist anyway and are publicly clear to everyone. These are only four or five cases that are coming from retention. Otherwise everyone else's salary is crystal clear to everyone. I see no reason [why franchises would have a problem revealing the figures]," the former official said was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

"The franchise is declaring it in the books - the auditors have to see it anyway - so it doesn't really kill them. If it is a publicly listed company they will have to open their books anyway," he added.