ECB prepared to play hardball

In fact, a damaging stand-off looks much more likely - unless something gives before next year's second staging of the IPL. And England Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke, for one, seems determined to play hardball.

"I can't see [coach] Peter Moores determining that he wants to release a player," Clarke said. "The risks are very significant.

"We will be about to play Australia. Just what would people say if Peter released an England player and he then got injured and couldn't play in the Ashes series?"

With India's Mahendra Dhoni and Australia's Andrew Symonds about to be paid £500,000 for six weeks' work, it would be astonishing if England's players were not talking about the IPL. And leading batsman Pietersen has already described as "ridiculous" a situation in which he and his England team-mates, with the exception of the non-centrally contracted Dimitri Mascarenhas, are the only international cricketers not involved.

The ECB's stance throws up the possibility of some players considering whether they would be better off rejecting ECB contracts next September - thereby freeing themselves for IPL cricket while gambling on national selectors being unable to do without them.

So what if Pietersen, for example, did just that?

"It would free him up," agreed Clarke. "It's a risk he would take. 'KP' runs the risk, as anybody does, of losing his place and of getting injured.

"Employment contracts are not compulsory. But then you run the risks of not being employed by that person.

"Cricket careers can come to an end as well as a beginning."