John Inverdale, writing in The Daily Telegraph, says that the Indian Cricket League has restored the word “rebel” to the cricket world after a 30-year absence. And he thinks that the ICL might have a chance of succeeding.
Bit by bit, one or two well-known players are signing up for the league, and while, as things stand, it doesn't have the international game quaking in its boots, at the same time it is firing a warning shot across the International Cricket Council's bows, and they ignore it at their peril.
Inverdale makes the point that other wealthy individuals will be looking on with more than passing interest and the game’s bosses cannot rest on their laurels.
This after all, is a sport that contrived, despite all the business acumen that has come into cricket in recent years, to organise possibly the least impressive World Cup ever staged. It's almost impossible to imagine - actually it is impossible to imagine - a football World Cup bombing in Brazil, or a Rugby World Cup failing in New Zealand. Well the ICC took cricket's equivalent to the West Indies and made it a laughing stock.
The ICL could turn out to be a complete catastrophe, with the rug pulled from under its feet by a unified front from all the main Test-playing countries. It could equally, in a cricket-mad nation, be setting the standard for taking the sport to a new level.
