Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
The investment in SA players in this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL), which starts in the United Arab Emirates tomorrow, is worth more than R100-million.
Dale Steyn and David Miller, who will each earn the equivalent of R22 071 000 from Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab respectively, head the SA money list. Marchant de Lange is at the other end of that scale with his Mumbai Indians pay packet of R523 560.
Nine other South Africans - AB de Villiers, Jacques Kallis, Faf du Plessis, JP Duminy, Quinton de Kock, Beuran Hendricks, Wayne Parnell, and Albie and Morne Morkel - round out a dollared dozen whose IPL earnings add up to R100 126 112.
Of those players, only Hendricks has no experience of being part of cricket’s most hyped tournament. He will make his IPL debut for Kings XI Punjab and can expect to have to keep his head when vast crowds about him are losing theirs.
“It’s important that he sticks to his role, but playing in the World T20 will have taught him about tension and pressure,” Hendricks’ coach at the Cape Cobras, Paul Adams, said yesterday.
Hendricks did not have sparkling figures to show for his WT20 games against the Netherlands, England and India in Bangladesh, where he took four wickets at an average of 24.25 and an economy rate of 8.3.
But he showed remarkable composure for a man who will turn 24 a week after the IPL final on June 1, most impressively by bowling slower balls out of the back of his hand.
Not that the IPL is all about cricket - tales of off-field hijinks have also grabbed headlines.
Pietermaritzburg’s own Gabriella Pasqualotto, a Mumbai Indians cheerleader in 2011, was bundled off home for blogging too graphically about what the players got up to after dark.
Wayne Parnell, meanwhile, still has a drugs charge hanging over him after being arrested at a party in a Mumbai hotel during the 2012 IPL. He has protested his innocence.
Adams thought the possibility of Hendricks being caught up in that kind of trouble was unlikely.
“The parties have slowed down - the budgets have been cut and Dubai is a different place from India,” Adams said. “Beuran is a quiet guy; normal and down to earth.”
Rather, Adams said, Hendricks would be on a mission to make his name on cricket’s most watched stage.
“He has a lot of talent and he’s trying to grow it,” Adams. “He needs to grab every opportunity that comes his way.”
Hendricks could have his first chance to do so when his team play Chennai Super Kings in Abu Dhabi on Friday.
In tomorrow’s opening match in Sharjah, South Africans will be keen to see how De Lange’s Mumbai outfit shape up against a Kolkata Knight Riders side that could include Kallis and Morne Morkel.
On the money scorecard, that game has already been decided. Kallis will make R8 289 703 this year and Morkel R4 886 561. Between them, that is R12 652 794 more than De Lange.
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