The coaches to the modern cricket sides are worth plenty to most boards, as a number of whom pay them a basic salary several times that of their top players.

Ravi Shastri, at $1.17 million per year, is the world's best-paid coach, and on his salary alone, he earns less only than what the top player from Australia, England and India earns in a year. (Shastri, like all coaches, does not earn match fees.) But paying the head coach that much more than the top players seems to be a South Asian trend, reports thecricketmonthly.com.

The BCB pay Chandika Hathurasingha five times the basic salary of their top player; similarly Mickey Arthur is paid three times as much as a top category Pakistan player; Sri Lanka were paying their last full-time coach, Graham Ford, twice what their top player was paid.

Perhaps it is because, historically, it is in these countries that the coach's position has been the most vulnerable: the high-risk nature of a subcontinent job means attracting someone, especially from outside the region, requires that much more money.

By contrast, Australia and England pay their coach around half of what their top player earns as a basic salary.