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April 9, 2008
Posted on 04/09/2008 in Indian Cricket League
Patrick Kidd chats with John Emburey, one of the ICL coaches, about "the ICL World Series...a triangular tournament between the pick of the players from the eight ICL franchises".
"The lack of practice facilities has been the big problem," Emburey added. "The BCCI have made it very difficult for us to play at anything other than municipal grounds and the practice facilities have been shared between the teams, but hopefully this will improve."
The ICL staged its first Twenty20 tournament before Christmas, taking some of the wind out of the IPL, which is backed by the Indian board. Emburey said that crowds for the matches, played at only three grounds, have been "mixed but excellent at the games in Hyderabad with up to 20,000 watching". The former England off spinner added that the TV viewing figures for the ICL, helped by the partnership between Zee and Ten Sports, have been impressive. "There have been more people watching the ICL on TV than were watching the India v South Africa Test series," he said.
Read the full story at The Times' Line and Length.
March 14, 2008
Posted on 03/14/2008 in Indian Cricket League
Sitting at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula, Rahut Bhatia notices that there's a distinct buzz around the small ground. But why, after two days of cricket bereft of any emotional attachment, is the crowd noisier?
Read on at Rediff.com to find out.
March 13, 2008
Posted on 03/13/2008 in Indian Cricket League
Brian Lara hit a patch of poor form during the inaugural ICL tournament in 2007 and is missing the current tournament because of an injured wrist. Anand Vasu, of the Hindustan Times, spoke to Lara on the ICL, players having more options than just playing for their country, and India v Australia.
Drawing away from the monopoly the boards had over their players? If you ask a New Zealand cricketer what his financial terms are with his country you'll realise that the IPL and ICL are good avenues. Stanford was not under the WICB in its first year but since it has come under the official umbrella. Let's see what happens in India with the leagues. Equally let's see what the boards do in countries like New Zealand. I've played Test matches in New Zealand where there are two men and a dog watching while next door there are 60,000 people watching a Rugby game. So the NZC have to get their act together and make sure they keep their cricketers. You can't blame a young man for going out there and seeking to make a living for himself and his family.
March 6, 2008
Posted on 03/06/2008 in IPL
John Emburey, the former England and Middlesex offspinner, has been appointed coach by one of the ICL franchises. Patrick Kidd finds out more in today's Times:
Emburey has signed a three-year contract with the Ahmedabad Rockets, who will be captained by Damien Martyn, the former Australia batsman, and include Murray Goodwin, the Sussex and Zimbabwe batsman, Wavell Hinds, of Derbyshire and West Indies, and Jason Gillespie, the former Australia fast bowler, who is due to play for Glamorgan.
Speaking to The Times from Chandigarh yesterday, Emburey said that he was relying on his core of senior players to lift the inexperienced young Indians in his team and added that there was no reason why the league could not coexist with the official Indian Premier League (IPL), which is backed by the Indian board.
“The competition between the two will be good for the game,” Emburey said. “People have been surprised how much financial impact the ICL can have. There are lots of companies out there interested in sponsoring it.”
March 2, 2008
Posted on 03/02/2008 in Indian Cricket League
Shane Bond, who joined the Indian Cricket League, doesn't know why he is being treated like a rebel. Read Anand Vasu's interview with Bond in the Hindustan Times.
"The disappointing thing is that the NZC initially said I could come and play in the ICL if it did not clash with international cricket," said Bond. "Then they wanted me to renege on the contract which was very good. I acted on good faith and now I'm being called a rebel and being banned."
December 14, 2007
Posted on 12/14/2007 in Indian Cricket League
In the Hindu Vijay Lokapally writes on a promising seamer from Bijni, a sleepy village in Bongaigaon in Assam.
Youngest among three children, having lost his father at three, [Sujay] Tarafdar symbolises the story of a young sportsman from remote corners, striving for recognition and opportunity despite possessing talent. His love for cricket grew from reading exploits of his heroes in newspapers and sometimes watching them on television.
November 30, 2007
Posted on 11/30/2007 in Indian Cricket League
Writing in The Times, Shane Warne flags that Twenty20 will hit India, the game’s largest market, in a big way over the months ahead. The ICL starts today, although Warne has joined the official IPL – “there are lots of capital letters in those sentences” he admits - but Pandora’s Box has been opened, and Warne does not approve of the possible action against those playing in the ICL.
Both leagues give wonderful opportunities to professional cricketers and I think it is right that players should have the freedom to play in whichever of them they wish to. Although the ICL is yet to be given official blessing, I hope that players are not penalised or banned from other competitions.
Cricketers have to earn a living and the bills do not stop coming through the letterbox at the end of a season. It is wrong that honest men … with good reputations may be punished for simply accepting very good offers to ply their trade. The ICL has been described as a breakaway and a rebel league, yet comparisons to World Series Cricket in the late-Seventies do not stand up.
It will be interesting to see how the ICL works, whether the crowds give their support and how the facilities stand up. But, however popular it proves, I cannot imagine a big split in the game.
November 15, 2007
Posted on 11/15/2007 in Indian Cricket League
Simon Briggs writing in The Daily Telegraph reports that the launch of the Indian Cricket League was not the slick affair that had been expected and it raised concerns about what is to come.
The competence of the ICL was immediately put in doubt as their first statement left off the names of the six team captains - Law, Brian Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Craig McMillan, Chris Cairns and Marvan Atapattu.
As the ICL have held up Lara and Inzamam as their star attractions since the project was first unveiled, this embarrassing omission suggested that the tournament, due to start on Nov 30 at a ground near Chandigarh in northern India, is unlikely to proceed without a few hitches.
November 14, 2007
Posted on 11/14/2007 in Indian Cricket League
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.
November 12, 2007
Posted on 11/12/2007 in Indian Cricket League
Scyld Berry writing in The Daily Telegraph is of the opinion that the Indian Cricket League is set to fail, and much of the blame lies with Kapil Dev whose “great sense of timing has deserted him”.
Around 50 cricketers are milling around Chennai this weekend wondering what, if anything, is going to happen. ICL's signings include some great has-beens … but the majority are young Indian players whom nobody has heard of, and who have signed away their careers in official cricket after being promised 20 to 40 lakh rupees (£25,000-£50,000) for a three-year contract.
They have got one ground to play on, at Panchkula outside Chandigarh. What the teams are, and when they will play, has not yet been displayed on the website of the Indian Cricket League. Only one thing is certain: the terrible timing of this breakaway tournament.
October 23, 2007
Posted on 10/23/2007 in Indian Cricket League
The nascent Indian Cricket League, and the opportunities presented by the Twenty20 format, have attracted the attentions of the authoritative international affairs magazine, The Economist, which explores how the game could be changed for good by the shortest version yet played.
The short format is more spectacular. It encourages batsmen to hit the ball out of the ground for a six, which spectators love. At the halfway mark, the Twenty20 tournament in South Africa averaged eight sixes per three-hour game. By comparison, a series of five test-matches between England and Australia in 2005, rated the most exciting in a 130-year rivalry, averaged less than two sixes a day.
September 2, 2007
Posted on 09/02/2007 in Indian Cricket League
Anand Vasu, writing in Tehelka, an Indian weekly magazine, isn't very optimistic about the Indian Cricket League's future. He thinks creating artificial rivalries isn't going to keep the fans hooked.
Randomly slotting international cricketers into teams does not work, because cricket fans have always been loyal to their teams. Whether it is India vs Pakistan, Lancashire vs Yorkshire, Delhi vs Bombay, Dadar Union vs CCI, even Greater Kailash II Main Road vs I Main Road, there’s something at stake for the fan. When you create artificial rivalries you kill this sense of identity.
He also questions the quality of talent the ICL has managed to attract so far.
It may seem as if the ICL has drawn a lot of cricketers away from the mainstream but they have little to show for quality. They’ve assembled a motley crew of havebeens, might-have-beens and wannabes. Yet, Kapil will have us believe the nation will sit up and watch this lot ... Just who will watch Shalabh Srivastava bowl to Shashank Nag when Ricky Ponting is hooking Zaheer Khan or Yuvraj Singh is clobbering Mohammad Asif?
August 23, 2007
Posted on 08/23/2007 in Indian Cricket League
The BCCI-ICL face-off continues and who will emerge the winner among two is a favourite question with comment and leader writers.
Aminah Sheikh works out the numbers in the Business Standard
The advantage for ICL players is that the amount in the contract is a guaranteed sum, as opposed to BCCI fees, which require that players be in the team for the match in question.
Therefore, factors like being dropped from the team and injuries could impact the fees of players affiliated to the BCCI. The prize money, however, at Rs 4.2 crore is the same for both sides, though the BCCI revised it yesterday.
The editorial in the Hindu draws a parallel between the Packer affair and ICL.
The Australian media mogul felt spurned by the Australian cricket administrators when he bid for international broadcast rights. The current Indian cricket administration has inherited the problem from its predecessor, which refused Zee’s offer, sowing the seeds of the ICL.
Meanwhile in the Daily Times MU Haq, a life member of the Pakistan board and a former president of the Karachi Cricket Association, wonders why the PCB imposed life bans on its players who joined the ICL.
In a Packer-like situation, the BCCI and the ICL will in all probability kiss and make up sooner or later and lifting of bans on Indian players will be a part of the deal. What would be the status of Pakistan players then?
The ban on players is all the more unjustified as the ICL playing programme does not interfere with Pakistan’s domestic cricket schedule and contracted players will be released for national duty in the event of a clash in dates. So why the fuss. If our players are allowed to play county and league cricket in the UK, why the embargo on the ICL?
Also read Osman Samiuddin's piece on Pakistan and the fallout of the ICl signings on cricinfo.com
July 27, 2007
Posted on 07/27/2007 in Indian Cricket League
While the bosses at the Indian Cricket League (ICL) reiterate that it isn't a breakaway league, majority of the world's cricketers who do not have faith in the ICC to administer the game effectively may just pounce at the first opportunity that comes their way. Neil Manthorp compares this scenario with that of a tabloid sub-editor in Australia who masterminded a cunning method to break himself away from his organisation, despite accepting a couple of pay rises.
He had tried resigning before but, being a gentle sort of fellow who hated confrontation, he had been easily dissuaded by the sports editor. He had even been given a couple of pay rises but that, of course, wasn't the point. There was only one way he was ever going to leave. He had to get himself sacked.
Read the full piece in Supercricket.
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