Mumbai, May 15: Shane Warne and his fellow Australians in the Rajasthan Royals had last night almost made up their mind to leave India, shaken by the blasts at their team base, Jaipur.

What changed their minds this morning was the Indian Premier League’s mega bucks. IPL boss Lalit Modi told the Australians — and South African Graeme Smith — that if they walked out on their contract, they might be overlooked for future seasons, a league source said.

Royals captain Warne, Shane Watson, Smith and the team’s Australian performance manager, Darren Berry, left for Jaipur today from Goa where they had been vacationing.

All of them will be available for Saturday’s home game against the Bangalore Royal Challengers. “We are looking forward to it. Yes, they were a little bothered, but now they are assured. They are on their way to the city,” Modi said.

The four foreign signings had held an emergency meeting in Goa last night with Fraser Castellino, CEO of Emerging Media, which owns the Rajasthan Royals. They told him they wanted out, league sources confirmed.

This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald quoted Berry as saying: “We are seriously considering a real option of getting on the plane and getting out of here…. I was talking to Warnie this morning and asked, ‘If this blast had occurred a day before we were due to fly over here, would we still have come?’ He said there was no way we would have come.

“It is terrifying. To think I was standing in the exact location the bombs went off only two days ago… it was a couple of kilometres from the team hotel. The whole country has gone into lockdown.”

The remarks did not go down well with the IPL bosses. “Berry is talking through his hat. He has no idea what India is all about. You and I know the reality. Nothing can lock down India. The game will go on,” said Sunder Raman, CEO of the IPL.

The league source said that had the IPL wilted before such “pressure tactics”, foreign players from other teams, too, might have left.

“It was necessary to put an end to this. It was made clear… that they were bound by contract to play the full season and if they did not, it would affect their reputation and the possibility of their being considered for the following IPL seasons,” the source said.