Burnout Fears As India Targets England's Top Players

England reacted with mistrust last night to Indian pressure for an annual moratorium in international cricket to free the world's best one-day players to join the ground-breaking Indian Premier League.

Top England one-day players such as Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood are on India's wish list if it can persuade ICC chief executives gathering in Kuala Lumpur over the next two days to clear March and April of Test and one-day internationals to ensure the success of its cash-rich Twenty20 league.

Plans are already well advanced to shift the IPL to March and April in 2009, and Australia has confirmed that it will consider a moratorium. But England's team are scheduled to tour the West Indies next winter and Giles Clarke, the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, sounded an initially hostile note.

"I don't believe England players will be involved next year," he said. "Several have already complained about burnout caused by too much cricket. Our players are contracted and we are committed to touring the West Indies at that time."

However, David Collier, the ECB chief executive who is in Kuala Lumpur, will not reject India's long-term plan outright, privately taking the pragmatic view that some Indian-led changes in the world game are inevitable and that England's overriding priority must be to protect its own international summer.

England players will be conspicuous by their absence in Mumbai tomorrow when representatives of the eight Indian franchises take part in an auction of players to assemble their squads for this year's inaugural IPL tournament, which runs from mid-April to early June. But senior England players hope the ECB will not actively block their involvement if the Twenty20 league is rescheduled outside their international commitments.

The IPL has been a chief topic of conversation on England's tour of New Zealand, and Clarke's talk of "burnout" will not go down well. It is not so trendy when such rewards are at stake.

England's centrally contracted players are the best rewarded in the world, with average contracts worth about £250,000 and roughly the same available in endorsements. The best can expect much more. But that does not prevent envious glances at the IPL; Australian players have been promised basic rewards of £150,000 for only six weeks' work.

Andrew Flintoff, whose latest comeback from chronic ankle trouble begins for England Lions in Mumbai today, would be another sought-after England player if he proved his fitness.