CA unable to lure big guns for domestic tournament

Cricket Australia may be hoping that the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Kevin Pietersen feature in its IPL-style Twenty20 domestic tournament next summer but some state teams' officials are not as upbeat as they don't have enough money to lure the stars.

New South wales Chief Executive of Cricket, David Gilbert said lack of money will make it extremely difficult to lure the exorbitantly high-priced cricketers to Australian shores.

"(We need) someone like a Pietersen or Andrew Flintoff or a Tendulkar. My concern is that are we realistically going to have the funds available to attract those sorts of players? Because they're not going to come cheap," Gilbert said.

"You presume Pietersen doesn't get out of bed unless it's a sizeable amount of money. That's what we've got to get our heads across.

"We can't get away from the fact that it's a domestic competition, so I can't imagine the funds available will be sizeable to the level I'm talking about, but who knows?" he was quoted as saying by 'Sydney Morning Herald'.

Gilbert argued that fielding relatively unknown overseas players will not work.

"It's one thing wanting your team to win with an overseas player, but it's also about the public wanting to watch that player.

"We could trawl English county cricket and find a very good Twenty20 player, but it's someone that people here may never have heard of, and I don't think that's what we're trying to do here. We need to have someone who obviously plays good cricket but also appeals to the public."