With most of the international players missing out on some part of the tournament, IPL could very well be a domestic tournament with guest appearances from international players.

If you have followed the IPL auctions closely, you would have seen that the Australians were paid the most to play the first year. Maybe that was a trick because anyway they are not going to play most the series. Initially there were supposed to miss the whole series but thanks to the last minute cancellation of the Pakistan / Australia series due to “security reasons”, now the Australians can play 4 out of their 14 scheduled matches. Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey, Brett Lee and the other Australians have to be back home in Australia by May 1 for a training camp ahead of the West Indies tour. So the IPL teams need to pay only a fraction of the million dollar figures.

New Zealand cricketers Daniel Vettori, Brendon McCullum, Jacob Oram, Ross Taylor and Kyle Mills can only play just 4. Pakistan and Sri Lankan players would also have missed the series but some arm twisting and intervention helped them postpone the Srilanka - Pakistan series. So BCCI / IPL banning Shoaib Akhtar could be just a return of favour.

IPL lovers would hope to see more international players and hope that ICC will keep aside a month from the international calendar so that all the teams can play IPL. But what do the other boards gain ? Well if they do not, then they risk losing their players to the rich league.