"National duty comes first": Michael Atherton welcomes England star players not going to IPL 2021

Former England captain Michael Atherton has welcomed the England and Wales Cricket Board's decision of not sending its players for the remainder of the IPL 2021 whenever and wherever the BCCI decides to host it. 

In his article for The Times, Atherton has argued that it was high time England said no to the IPL amid the uncertainty around the tournament itself and the chaos it brings with revamped schedule due to covid-19.

Atherton also said that England have ‘tiptoed’ around IPL for so long and have acceded to the demands of the league sending the star players across to India even at the cost of their ‘national duty,’ which he said comes first.

“England have tiptoed fearfully around the IPL: they rested players for vital Tests in India instead; allowed them, potentially, to miss the start of the international summer; refused to countenance bringing them home from India despite the escalating Covid crisis, and in effect allowed them to become free agents for two months. Giles’s comments, then, were a welcome reassertion of the principle that, outside of the IPL window in April and May, national duty comes first,” Atherton wrote in his regular piece in The Times.

He also suggested that players too will not be too eager to rejoin the IPL at its resumption due to very busy schedule starting from June. He also said that it is unlikely that any of those players making big income out of the IPL would rise their stake against the ECB which has been employing them for a large part of their career.

“It is unlikely that the players will risk a showdown with their principal employer over this, despite the potential loss of income. There will be little appetite for returning to the IPL this year, given the workload in front of the players in the English summer and the following winter. No one would want to jeopardise a chance of playing in the T20 World Cup or the Ashes, both of which would come swiftly on the back of a rescheduled IPL,” Atherton added.

Notably, England had accepted that the likes of Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jofra Archer, and Chris Woakes would miss the Test series against New Zealand in case their teams would have reached the playoff stage. Ben Stokes broke his hand to go back to the UK while Archer never turned up for the IPL due to a finger surgery before the start of the tournament. 

Anyway, the suspension of the tournament has allowed the likes of Buttler, Woakes and Sam Curran to return home however they will not be rushed back to the longest format against the Blackcaps as England are also eager to try out few new faces in the Ashes year.