Last Updated on 4 years ago by Charbel Coorey
Cricket News: Who are the top overseas platinum players in the BBL draft? | Top overseas platinum in the BBL draft
Trent Boult, Andre Russell, Jason Roy and Shadab Khan are amongst the latest confirmed platinum players for the overseas draft of the Big Bash League (BBL).
There will be 12 such players who will be paid AU $340,000 irrespective of the number of games that they will be available for. Barring the aforementioned four, the rest of the players include: Faf du Plessis, Liam Livingstone, Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, Sam Billings, Rashid Khan, Chris Jordan and David Wiley.
Rashid, Jordan, Billings, Shadab and Russell can also be retained by the clubs that they turned up for last season. Shadab and Jordan played for the Sydney Sixers whereas Rashid featured for the Adelaide Strikers. Russell and Billings were a part of the Melbourne Stars and Sydney Thunder respectively.
Top overseas players unlikely to be available for entireity of the BBL
Meanwhile, Wiley and Shadab are the only platinum players to not be involved either in the upcoming South African T20 league or the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based ILT20. The dates for these three tournaments are likely to clash and that will place doubts on the availability of these top-players for the whole duration of the BBL.
Shadab is also amongst the 40+ Pakistani players to have given in their names for the draft. This is amidst the apprehensions over the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) granting a no-objection certificate (NOC) to its players for overseas leagues. Perhaps that explains that absence of other all-format stars like Babar Azam, Mohammed Rizwan and Shaheen Shah Afridi from the 279-member strong draft list of the BBL.
Some of the other Pakistani players who have put in their names for the list include Wahab Riaz, Mohammed Amir and Sarfaraz Ahmed.
Boult is expected to be amongst the top picks from the draft whereas Russell and Rashid could be retained by Stars and Strikers respectively. 26 players are available for retention and they can decide the band that they will like to slot themselves in. For example, James Vince (Sixers) and Mujeeb ur Rahman (Brisbane Heat) are likely to be a part of the gold category in the draft process, ESPNCricinfo reports.
