Graham Gooch
Graham is a former England captain with a huge standing within the cricketing and sporting world.
The ex-Essex skipper was an opening batsman of great repute - scoring 333 in one innings against India in 1990 and breaking a number of records in the progress.
He ended his career as England's all-time highest run scorer and his opinions still carry substantial weight.
The OBE is a regular guest on Setanta Sports News and we will be bringing you his comments on England and other cricketing matters here on setantasports.com.
IPL brings unprecedented sums of money
Obviously the financial rewards are much greater today than in the olden days. With this new dimension of the Indian Premier League, it’s taken the players’ earnings to a different level.
Have they gone for the right price? I don’t know. Certainly Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff have gone for around $1.5 million I believe. I don’t really know how that equates into what they get out of it because they’ll only be there for three weeks of the competition.
It’s good for the ego to be the most expensive player in the IPL but with a big price tag comes the pressure to perform.
The counties have got to be compensated. It’s slightly different with the players who are centrally contracted to England because they’re getting paid by England.
But with people like Ravi Bopara they are on part-England contracts. Essex will lose his services for quite an important part of the season. It clashes with our Friends Provident Trophy matches and he’s a big part of our season – he’s number three batsman and he bowls as well so I think it’s only fair that some sort of compensation should go to the counties.