Player power? Cricket's new world order makes a select few rich while the majority miss out

Vaibhav Suryavanshi only makes you feel old. And compared to a 13-year-old Indian batting prodigy, most of us are old.

- Jonathan Liew

The signing of Suryavanshi by Rajasthan Royals for £102,000 harvested most of the headline coverage of the recent Indian Premier League auction, and fair enough.

The first IPL player born after the release of Friday by Rebecca Black: this is good, shareable content.

On the other hand, Allah Ghazanfar makes you feel both old and useless. The 18-year-old off-spinner, auctioned to Mumbai Indians for £447,000, only took up cricket during the pandemic. I urge you to keep reading that sentence until it makes sense, which it never will. I have a tin of kidney beans in my cupboard that is older than this guy's cricket career. Apparently Ghazanfar was introduced to the sport by his older brother Atta in 2020. I have open browser tabs that predate that.

Certainly Ghazanfar has all the makings of a potential star. Tall and whirling, with a clutch of variations and the ability to get immense drift on the ball, he has been described by Eoin Morgan as "the next Rashid Khan". He has already played white-ball cricket for the senior Afghanistan side. This should go well.

At the same time, it's worth asking: what if it doesn't? What if an 18-year-old spin bowler relatively new to the sport, living in a foreign country and suddenly thrust into the biggest league in the world, does not prove an instant success? What safety net is there, what protections, what options? What if he gets absolutely collared in his first game? What if he gets injured?