London, June 22 (IANS) Australia’s hard-hitting batsman David Warner said he would consider taking up a mega contract offer from a rebel cricket league, in line with the way many of Australia’s greats defected to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s.
In May, Indian billionaire Subhash Chandra was, through his Essel Group empire, prepared to offer Warner and Australia Test captain Michael Clarke a 10-year contract worth $50 million each to spearhead the proposed rebel Twenty20 league.
“I don’t like pointing things at people, but say for instance if someone puts out a couple of extra thousand dollars on the table, nine times out of 10 they do take that,” Warner was quoted as saying by Sydney’s Sky Sports Radio on Monday.
“It’s about being honest. You can’t rule it out, you can’t say no, because we love playing the sport we do but we also love getting paid for what we do, so if we can be honest and up front (that it is better).”
“If I say I’d never take it and all of a sudden I do it looks stupid on your behalf. I’m just being honest in saying it’s not out of the question, and I’d certainly have to think about it,” he added.
Warner agreed players from countries where central contracts are dwarfed by those on offer would be more susceptible to offers from a rebel league.
“You have three or four teams where the average wage is going to be fantastic and some other teams are going to be not as fortunate, and if you’re putting them (offers) out there it’s a no-brainer for some of those teams,” the 28-year-old said.
“At the end of the day people have to survive in this world, and it’s either work and be paid for what you love doing or work and be paid for something you don’t like doing. There’s an option there,” Warner concluded.