What Cricket Can Learn From HELP
Pt 3
Issue No 28
By now we’ve established two things.
First, developing an elite junior cricketer costs roughly USD $170,000 from Under-15 to Under-19.
Second, once players leave the junior system, that investment disappears from the balance sheet forever.
That might feel normal. It isn’t.
There is another system that faced this exact problem and solved it decades ago.
Higher education.
The problem universities faced
Governments fund university education upfront.
Not everyone graduates.
Not everyone earns high salaries.
Not everyone repays the full cost of their degree.
If repayment depended on fixed schedules or traditional loans, many graduates would struggle and the system would become politically toxic.
So they built something smarter.
The core principle
Australia’s HELP (Higher Education Loan Program) works on one simple idea:
You repay only if you earn enough.
There is:
An income threshold
A marginal repayment rate
Automatic collection
Caps and protections
Most people never fully repay. That’s expected.
A smaller group who succeed financially contribute more.
That contribution sustains the system for the next cohort.
It is not charity.
It is not punishment.
It is structured human capital investment.
Translating HELP to cricket
The junior pathway is cricket’s university.
From Under-15 to Under-19, the system invests heavily in selected players.
After Under-19, careers diverge.
Roughly 75–85 percent never secure professional contracts
Around 15–25 percent earn professional contracts
5–10 percent reach international cricket
Fewer than 5 percent reach IPL-level earnings
Under a HELP-style model, the structure would be simple.
No contribution below a defined income threshold.
If a player earns above that threshold, a small marginal percentage of income above the threshold contributes back to a central Player Development Fund.
For example:
If the threshold were USD $25,000 per year:
A player earning USD $20,000 contributes nothing
A player earning USD $32,000 contributes 10 percent of the USD $7,000 above the threshold
A player earning USD $40,000 contributes 10 percent of the USD $15,000 above the threshold
Contracts in the West Indies are one-year deals.
The average professional career is 8 years from 23–31, but it is realistic to assume the majority of players would only be contracted in 5 out of those 8 years.
Most contributing players might recycle only a few thousand dollars over their career.
That’s fine.
The model doesn’t depend on everyone repaying USD $170,000.
It depends on modest contributions from a minority, compounded across cohorts.
The internationals and high earners would contribute more. Not because they’re targeted, but because the system scales naturally with success.
That’s the difference between clawback and contribution.
One punishes.
The other sustains.
HELP solved this problem for higher education.
Cricket can adapt the principle for development..
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