IPL doping controversy

An unknown cricket website (cricketnirvana.com) reports that the random testing carried out by WADA during the recently concluded Indian Premier League has resulted in one sample testing positive.

There's a lot of conjecture over who that player could be. We can rule out Shane Warne, who actually only tested positive for a diuretic, since the report mentions a sub-continental fast bowler. Then there's the Pakistani duo of Akhtar & Asif who first tested positive before the 2006 Champions Trophy. They were let off by a kangaroo court committee. But shortly before the 2007 World Cup, they were mysteriously declared unfit for the tournament. There're also a few who've admitted in the past to using recreational drugs (Fleming, Gibbs, etc.)

But I have a sneaking feeling it wasn't a player at all. I think it was Lalit Modi. I'm fairly sure he was smoking something when he kept talking about enforcing bans on teams which fielded ICL players and insisting that players would necessarily have to turn out for their IPL teams in the Champions League even if the team that they normally represented in their country's domestic season qualified.

Labels: drugs, indian premier league, ipl 2008, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:54 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

The future of cricket, as I see it

A few days after a Twenty20 Champions League was announced, followed promptly by the ECB's partnership (?) with Allen Stanford for a series of five Twenty20 games where the winner of each game received US $20 million (and the loser got to watch the winner's cheques), it is fairly obvious that the ICC's hold on cricket is being loosened, and big time at that!

For all their talk about how having three forms of the game is so wonderful, it is hard to see how the ICC can come up with a calendar which accommodates enough quantities of test, 50-over and 20-over cricket. In fact, it is all the more baffling that even after these two announcements, they have not said a word about the impact on their vision for international cricket.

Instead, what we got was an announcement yesterday about the launch of the ICC Champions Trophy 2008 in Pakistan. Now that tournament is probably the most despised one-day tournament in the world given how it turns up unnecessarily every couple of years, a year before, or a year after the World Cup.

It does seem as though the ICC is totally oblivious about how the big money flowing in to promote Twenty20 will impact test and 50-over cricket. Assuming that all 3 forms of the game will co-exist, and every year there's one major ICC event lasting a month, it's hard to put up a schedule which accomodates 10 tests per country per year and 30 ODIs, aside from Twenty20 games. So is it fair to assume that in a few years, we won't actually have 3 forms of the game?

You can vote in our poll on a hypothetical scenario where the ICC allowed you to choose the two forms of the game. Which ones would you choose: Tests and Twenty20, ODIs and Twenty20 or Tests and ODIs?.

I don't believe there's enough time in the international calendar to support 3 forms of the game in addition to tournaments like the PLPL, TTPL, IPL, SAWEPL, WSPL, etc. Given that aside from England and West Indies, most other countries have overlapping domestic and international cricket seasons, it is highly unlikely that cricketers would be able to play for sufficient lengths of time in more than one such league.

Brendon McCullum, to pick a random name, could turn out for his IPL team for 3-4 games, scoot off to play 2 games in the TTPL, come back to the sub-continent for 2 games in the PLPL but miss out on the SAWEPL because he has to join his Kiwi mates for a test series against Bangladesh.

If Lalit Modi had his way, McCullum would have to apply to him for a work permit to play in other leagues. In the event that there was a conflict of interest between choosing which team to play for in the Champions League tournament, McCullum's interest would be over-riden by Lalit Modi's brainwave for the day. In addition, McCullum would need to be careful about who he hobnobs with and if he's caught talking to 'rebels', he can forget his pay cheque.

I don't think advertisers and sponsors are quite ready to throw away the 50-over game and the 8 uninterrupted hours of audience attention that they get through 100 guaranteed over-breaks, upto 20 wicket breaks and 1 hour of pre-match and post-match analysis. I believe that the ICC will end up kowtowing to 'market' interests and we will have (perhaps in the span of 5-8 years) two forms of the game, neither of which will seem remotely like the way they are now.

Bangladesh and Zimbabwe would still be playing test cricket, but they'd only play 3-day 'tests' against each other, Ireland & Kenya for 3 years and then move on to 4-day tests. All other test matches would perhaps still be played over 5 days, but there would be radical changes. Over rates would become faster, reaching 100 per day. Teams will be allowed to break-up the total number of overs they receive or bowl across two innings and the winner of the toss would choose from 3 options (1st innings overs faced-2nd innings overs faced): 150-100, 125-125 or 100-150. I'd detailed this out in a post in October 2004.

50-over and 20-over cricket will be merged and we will have 30-over games split across 3 innings of 10 overs each per team. There would be an alternating pattern to each team's innings (A1, B1, A2, B2, A3 & B3), similar to baseball. Each 10 over inning would have 3 overs of power-play, 2 of them at the start and 1 at the end. Teams would comprise 11 players, with only 7 allowed to bat. Boundary ropes would be around 50 m away from the wicket, enabling even scrawny chaps and no-hoper batsmen like Ashish Nehra to hit sixes. On a side note, there'd be some critics who'd complain that the middle 7 overs are boring. But those same critics would complain about the middle 3 balls being boring even if we reduced games to 1-over per innings! There'd be a Dirty-Thirty World Cup, sponsored by Surf (or pick your favourite detergent brand), held every 2 years.

Subhash Chandra would have wound up the Indian Cricket League in 2010 and Zee would thus get the telecast rights it wanted or ownership of an IPL team. It'd really seem like a win-win situation for all. Except that 30-year olds like Ambati Rayudu, Tejinder Pal Singh, R Sathish, Shalabh Srivastava and Abhishek Jhunjhunwala would feel so ridiculous that their prime years were spent (wasted?) in missing out on good money in the IPL and not being picked for India because of selectorial squabbles or because they were associated with the ICL. To paraphrase Marlon Brando's superb dialogue in 'On the Waterfront', they could have had class, they could have been contenders, they could have been somebodies. Instead of bums, which is what they became, let's face it!

Technology would finally be used appropriately in making several line decisions. Someone like Andrew Symonds would never keep getting away with umpiring howlers. Tony Cozier seems so frustrated, he forgets that this wasn't the first time in the last 6 months that Symonds has benefitted.

For a nation that is constantly hunting for 'the next big wrist spinner', Australia will give up their 5-year search for a half-decent spinner and settle on using Michael Clarke (current strike rate: 45, current avg: 20.5) and Andrew Symonds (current strike rate 83, current avg: 36.5) as their spinners in test cricket.

Shoaib Akhtar will be banned yet again, this time for using the Prime Minister's helicopter to arrive in time for a World Cup game. His excuse would be that he was helping the PM with campaigning for the general election.

Labels: champions trophy, future, icc, indian premier league, ipl 2008, lalit modi, prediction, stanford 2020, twenty20, umpires

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:48 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

IPL - Injury Prone League?

The news that Matthew Hayden will return home from Australia's on-going tour of the West Indies has Jon Pierik (Herald Sun) up in arms, since Hayden apparently aggravated his achilles tendon injury while playing in the Indian Premier League.

However, Hayden is not the only player to miss out on international assignments because of an injury sustained or aggravated while playing in the IPL.

Zaheer Khan's ankle injury, which ruled him out of the tour to Australia after just one test as well as the home series against South Africa, apparently resurfaced while playing in the IPL.

Sachin Tendulkar didn't heed the recommendation by John Gloster that he take rest. He played the first test against South Africa and ended up missing the rest of the series as well as nearly half of his side's games in the IPL. Perhaps he was still unfit when he returned, since he didn't exactly fare too well, as is fairly obvious from the numbers: 188 runs from 7 innings at a strike rate of 106.

Now, he will be missing two ODI series because of the injury.

All this makes me wonder if talk about international cricket being more important than the IPL is hogwash. If that indeed were the case, players wouldn't be risking aggravating injuries when they had international commitments immediately after the IPL ended.

Labels: australia, hayden, india, indian premier league, injury, ipl 2008, tendulkar, twenty20, zaheer khan

Thus spake Jagadish @ 5:08 pm | Sledge/Read 4 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Impact of the IPL

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd pretty much seen it all when Munaf Patel raced in from cover (How on earth was he fielding there in the first place?!), cut off a single and threatened to throw down the non-striker end stumps.

Yesterday, one of the players I really can't bear to watch on the field, Ashish Nehra (for his fielding, his hang-dog approach on the field and his ability to waste his talent), made a brilliant diving stop at fineleg to cut off a certain boundary in the last over of the Rajasthan v Mumbai game. Rajasthan needed 15 to win in the last over. They did manage to win, thanks mainly to some hopeless bowling (Fernando - bowling a wide with 3 to get in 1 ball) & fielding (Jayasuriya - butter fingers while gathering the throw from long-off which ensured that the game wasn't tied). But Nehra did the hitherto unthinkable - he dived, and effectively at that!

19.2 Fernando to Jadeja, 3 runs, Jadeja backs away towards leg side but Fernando follows him and cramps him for room, he gets an inside edge past the keeper and the ball runs to the boundary where Nehra sprints and dives full length to his left and saves one run, spectacular effort.

If Munaf & Nehra keep up the good fielding work and make comebacks to the Indian team, it'd make the team so much better, especially in limited over games.

Labels: fielding, indian premier league, ipl 2008, munaf, nehra, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:22 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Pieter$en to play in the IPL next year?

Kevin Pietersen's interview to the Daily Mail last week is sure to shake up the ECB. He has apparently been approached with a £ 2 million offer for a three year contract with one of the franchisees.

Since the ECB does not yet allow its centrally contracted players to play in the Indian Premier League, he does have the option of turning down an ECB contract offer so that he can play when and where he wants. Unlike other cricketers, he can be pretty safe in the knowledge that the absence of a central contract won't result in him not being considered for selection.

Yet, it's funny how his views have changed over the last year, like Will Luke too points out. Sample this chronology of quotes:

• June 2007 (during West Indies' tour of England):
  'Burnout could cut short my career.'
  
• October 2008 (during England's tour of Sri Lanka):
  'When I said I was tired in the summer nobody said anything to me, nobody backed me at all.'
  
• Feb 2008:
  'I know there is interest and, yes, there have been offers, etc etc, but it's not something I'm particularly interested in.'
  
• April 2008:
  'You want your best players playing both for their country and for the IPL. You don't want them choosing between the two. It's silly to think that you're losing up to a million over six weeks.'
  
• May 2008:
  'I am disappointed and irritated that England players have been stopped going so far, and I definitely want to go next year.'

It can be no-one's case that playing in the IPL is like a walk in the park. From what I've seen, these Twenty20 games need as much, if not more, focus as one-day internationals primarily because the situation changes so rapidly, on a ball-by-ball basis. In a fifty over game, you can recover from 60/4 and put up (or defend) a 250-260 score. In Twenty20, under most circumstances, you might as well concede the game at that stage.

So clearly players will experience burnout of some nature or the other. Obviously the money is good. But in today's cricketing setup, appearances for country and sponsorship deals are the only avenues for players to make money from their skills (and looks!). So, it can be no-one's case that players are mercenaries by playing for money.

Yet, like the chronology indicates, Pietersen has been far from consistent in his take on the IPL. He can't complain of burnout and sign on the IPL dotted line!

My take on there being too much cricket is that players always have the option of opting out of series. Typically the only players you'll see complaining about too much cricket are those that play the most often, and hence are the 'star' players. Surely they've performed well enough to risk skipping a game or a series and not face a piquant situation where they won't be included next time around. Also, if a sufficiently large number of players keep opting out of tournaments, cricket administrators will realize that they may be doing a lot of damage to the golden geese.

Labels: burnout, fatigue, indian premier league, ipl 2008, pietersen, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:30 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Thoughts on the IPL - Part 2

I know of one Australian batsman who just hates playing in India. Very simple - he just can't seem to make runs when he's here. No, that batsman isn't called Ricky Ponting.

During Australia's tour of India in 2007 where they played 7 ODIs and a Twenty20 game, Brad Hodge scored 61 runs from 7 innings.

Now he's kicked off his IPL career with 1 & 1. Is he looking forward to the rest of the series, or what?!

At least the Kolkata Knight Riders will be smiling, since they can now get Shoaib Akhar to play for them, after a committee ruled that his ban was only effective from June 4 2008.

One team that's not going to smile for a while, least of all their captain, is the Bangalore Royal Challengers side. Even if Geoffrey Boycott's moom and her friends bowled to them, they'd contrive to lose. The running between the wickets today against the Punjab Kings XI was downright pathetic. The side has just three major problems - nothing serious. They just can't bat, bowl or field in a manner that Twenty20 requires them to. Here's hoping that Dravid's team turn it around, in just the same manner as England had in the 1987 Ashes in Australia, on the back of Martin Johnson's write-up in 'The Independent' while covering that tour.

Labels: akhtar, australia, ban, hodge, india, indian premier league, ipl 2008, shoaib, shoaib akhtar, statistic, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:08 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Let's embrace IPL, but with a little more maturity

Graeme Smith's catch off Ganguly was looking perfectly right to me. It was as fair as you can get and I was baffled when the third umpire ruled it not out. Also, Ganguly should not have asked the on-field umpire to check with the third umpire. I expected a few words to be exchanged, knowing Ganguly, Smith & Warne and that did happen.

But, what I saw on news channels this morning was atrocious. They were trying to make it yet another India v Australia issue. There were even clips of the Sydney test where Australia clearly played foul. But, for heaven's sake, let's not mix the IPL with international cricket.

Everyone should learn to see IPL as a stand-alone league and it will definitely help the game in all ways. Let's not drag in issues in international cricket and extend the verbal warfare to IPL as well.

I have started to love IPL and I'm not particularly concerned about all the talk of Bollywood, cheergirls and too much glamour, as I love the cricket that's being played and it's extremely nice to see McGrath and Sehwag celebrating Dravid's dismissal or Afridi knocking fists with Rohit Sharma after the latter's sixer or Sohail Tanvir getting ecstatic after dismissing Salman Butt and being hugged by a lesser known Indian cricketer or Laxman, along with Symonds and Gilchrist, plotting ways to dismiss Watson.

To me, instances like these make IPL very interesting though I still like international cricket and Test cricket is definitely my first love. IPL is superb cricket entertainment without the international boundaries. Let's keep it that way and not create unnecessary controversies. Things are bad as it is with two Indian cricketers having a go at each other. Let's not make it worse by bringing international cricket's enmity into IPL.

Let IPL live for long and forever as I definitely feel that it would reduce animosity among players and it would be carried over to international games as well which is eventually what we are all looking for, in the best interests of the game.

Labels: ganguly, graeme smith, india, indian premier league, ipl 2008, twenty20, umpires, walking, warne

Thus spake Ganesh @ 1:59 pm | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Thoughts on the IPL - Part 1

The Indian Premier League got underway last week. While I haven't been able to watch games in their entirety, I've been able to watch some significant portions, which included some brilliant performances.

I think the jury is still out on whether spectators (and TV audiences) will root for a specific city-based team. There're only 8 cities (and states) represented. So which team does a cricket fan in Kerala support? Will he/she go for the team with the maximum number of Malayalis? What about folks in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh? I'd come close to having dual allegiance, to the Chennai Super Kings and the Bangalore Royal Challengers. Yet, I find it hard to support only these teams and none else. Maybe there're several other people like me, who're more than happy to enjoy every game (as long as it is rivetting stuff), regardless of the teams in action.

I'd anticipated that Hyderabad, Delhi and Punjab would be the 3 teams to beat, but turns out that Hyderabad's bowling resources are pretty scarce & unidimensional and Punjab isn't firing either. It's not as though the points table will continue to remain the way it is. There're bound to be changes as players move in & out and as the squads 'gel' better.

In contrast to a lot of people who're hopping mad about this format of the game and the blurring line between sport and entertainment, I find it hard to be condescending of Twenty20! If anything, I am quite excited about it. I'm more than willing to give it a chance, including the cheer-leaders and film star appearances. I don't expect the film stars to turn out for every single game their team features in.

Yes, there're definite ways to tweak it to make it a more level playing field between bat and ball, but that's a problem that exists in the 50-over format anyway. On this blog, we've touched on some suggestions earlier: Allowing only 6 players to bat in Twenty20 games (Steve Waugh said the same thing!) and increasing the per-bowler overs limit to 15 in ODIs or encourage wicket taking by allowing one extra over per wicket taken. Most of the ICC's rules are batsmen-oriented. Besides, what's the big deal about 11 players/batsmen or artificial stuff like 4 (or 10) overs per bowler?

The one thing I've figured out over the past 2+ decades of following cricket, especially over the last decade, is that if you don't respect a form of the game, you're unlikely to do well in that format. England's administrators, selectors and players kept disrespecting one-day internationals and they've more than paid the price. As Scyld Berry points out in his Editor's Notes in the 2008 edition of the Wisden Almanack, other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, England are the only Test-playing country never to have won a global one-day tournament.

The beauty of following a tournament like the IPL is watching McCullum or Sehwag play some jaw-droppingly astonishing shots, Pollock plugging away ad nauseum ad infinitum, McGrath bowl a bouncer to Symonds after Symonds smacked him over mid-wicket, Warne showing us that he's still good enough to make it to the Australian team, Asif & McGrath combining for a seam-bowling master-class, etc.

There's also the beauty of seeing people like Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Venugopala Rao, Sreesanth, etc. more or less appear like fish out of water in this format. I just don't understand how someone like Laxman can captain a Twenty20 side which has Afridi, Symonds, Gilchrist and Gibbs in it! If he weren't captain, his name would never be in a squad of 20!

The other thing that has struck me is the quality of the fielding, especially from the Indians in the tournament. The likes of RP Singh, Munaf, Kumble, etc. are always going to look stupid, but as was the case with the Indian Cricket League, a lot of the Indian players (who haven't yet turned out in internationals) have fielded much better than I'd expected. Perhaps the contributing factors were the support staff made available to the teams and the peer-pressure that comes with fielding alongside Ponting, Symonds, Gibbs, Afridi, de Villiers, Dilshan, Yuvraj, Kaif, Raina, Rohit Sharma, etc.

To me, there's no doubt that the IPL will be successful. What the BCCI and ICC need to do are:

• Revoke the ban on the ICL and recognize that tournament.
  
• Encourage team strategies to focus on ensuring that local players who've never played internationals (or haven't played enough of them) take upon themselves more responsibility. There are foreign players in the English county cricket system as well. The idea is that the domestic players don't just assume that the star recruit will do the job, because there maybe a few games where the star player is unavailable!
  
• I haven't yet watched the games from the stadium, but it'd be awesome if the in-stadium facilities like food, drinks, toilets, seats, etc. were revamped totally to make the stadiums far more spectator-friendly than they are right now. Since the franchisees get a share of (or all of) the gate revenue, they really have an incentive to encourage more people to watch the games from the stadiums.
  
• Figure out how on earth Sunil Gavaskar managed to get onto the SET MAX commentary team!

Labels: icc, india, indian cricket league, indian premier league, ipl 2008, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 7:26 pm | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Shoaib Akhtar banned for five years

In a dramatic decision, the Pakistan Cricket Board announced that Shoaib Akhtar had been banned for 5 years for violating the players' code of conduct, a document that I'm unable to locate on the PCB website.

As per the ICC code of conduct, a ban of 2-5 years is imposed on a player in the following situations:

• Betting on a game/series where the player/his team was a participant.
  
• Tried to sweet-talk someone else into betting.
  
• Gambled on a game/event.
  
• Tried to sweet-talk someone else into gambling.
  
• Received money/benefit/rewards for providing weather, team and pitch information.
  
• Received money/benefit/rewards and thus brought the game into disrepute.
  
• Provided money/benefit/rewards and thus brought the game into disrepute.
  
• Was approached to bet/gamble/provide information but didn't disclose the event to designated staff.
  
• Is aware of another player doing so but didn't report to the designated staff.

Was Shoaib's offense more severe than the above? Now, he cannot play for Pakistan or in Pakistan. Does this mean he will stick to the IPL? His fee is $425,000. Given the number of times he gets injured, he is unlikely to earn that full amount.

Perhaps the ICL is a better prospect, especially for a guaranteed income. In addition, the IPL is played in a very limited period of time (April-May). If Akhtar wants to play cricket for a longer duration, the ICL is a better place to display his wares.

Labels: akhtar, ban, indian cricket league, indian premier league, ipl 2008, pakistan, shoaib, shoaib akhtar, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:07 pm | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

ICC gets a few things right at least

The ICC's board met yesterday and there were quite a few significant announcements.

• It emphasized that bilateral series commitments would take precedence over IPL. Now will the WICB do something about Gayle, Chanderpaul and Sarwan who say they will play in the IPL rather than against Australia? I suppose player contracts would have clauses that prevent players from plying their trade elsewhere when they are required to turn out for the national side. That aspect can and should be enforced against Gayle, Chanderpaul and Sarwan. Unlike the bans imposed on ICL players, I don't think this is a restraint of trade situation.
  
• The Zimbabwe Cricket Union gets away scot-free despite the continued scrutiny over the handling of ICC-released funds for over three years now.
  
• The format for the 2011 World Cup is finalized. My post a year ago or so proposed only the top 8 teams having an automatic qualification while the remaining teams play against the ICC trophy finalists in a round-robin manner with the top 2 making it to the main draw. The main draw would have 2 groups of 5 teams each, played in round-robin. The top 3 from each group qualify for a Super Six round with the top 4 being the semi-finalists. There'd be a total of 42 games played, 32 of them being in the main tournament. Subsequent comments argued (rightly) for the second stage being a quarter-final knockout. This'd reduce the number of main draw games to 27. The ICC's thinking is on the lines of all 10 full ODI playing countries being joined by the top 4 finishers from a qualified (presumably the ICC trophy). The 14 teams are split into 2 groups of 7 each. The top 4 from each group go on to play quarter-finals and the winners of the quarter finals play the semis. This means there'd be 28 47 (2 x 7C2 + 4 + 2 + 1) games. Perhaps, in the interest of 'inclusivity' in cricket, the ICC's format is acceptable. That's far too many games!
  
• Player referrals will be trialled from South Africa's tour of England this summer. I eagerly look forward to player revolts, especially by lower order batsmen and part-time bowlers, against captains and team management, who discourage them from appealing against on-field umpire decisions so that the better batsmen or bowlers can benefit, just in case the appeal isn't worth it.
  
• Darrell Hair, who was hung out to dry in around November 2006, has been reinstated and will be eligible to umpire games between full member teams until March 2009, when his contract expires. This was always the right thing to do. Darrell Hair is a good umpire. He isn't incompetent, when you compare him with Bucknor or Benson. He took a harsh decision on 20 Aug 2006, but it was the right decision.
  
• Imtiaz Patel has been 'selected' as the CEO, but the negotiations are not yet done. Last year, we saw a similar situation with the farce around Graham Ford's appointment, and subsequent withdrawal, as India's coach. Why did the ICC put its foot firmly in its mouth by prematurely announcing Imtiaz Patel's name when he hadn't even agreed?!

Labels: 2011, 2011 world cup, ball tampering, forfeit, hair, icc, indian premier league, ipl 2008, oval 2006, pakistan, reviews, scheduling, twenty20, west indies, world cup, zimbabwe

Thus spake Jagadish @ 4:19 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Crisis time for cricket?

It doesn't seem like a great time to be a cricket administrator, especially if you aren't an Indian cricket administrator. I'd say this is a pretty testing time for cricket and I really hope the powers-that-be recognize it and fix the real problems.

New Zealand cricket could really do with some help. Shane Bond's NZ Cricket contract was terminated since he wanted to play in the Indian Cricket League. Scott Styris retired from test cricket to focus on playing limited overs cricket. He'd only played 8 tests in the last 3 years, compared to 49 ODIs and 13 Twenty20 games in that same period. I just don't understand exactly how playing 3 tests a year stressed him out. Most other players play between 8 and 12 tests a year on an average! Stephen Fleming may retire from test cricket less than a year after retiring from ODIs after the 2007 World Cup. A whole bunch of Pakistani cricketers, including Mohammad Sami and Naved-ul-Hasan Rana, have joined the ICL.

Update on 14 Feb: Stephen Fleming has confirmed that he will retire after New Zealand's upcoming test series against England.

The Indian Cricket League isn't the only reason why players are retiring. The Indian Premier League (website) is also likely to result in several cricketers in the twilight of their careers retiring to earn a lot of money for a few weeks of effort. Adam Gilchrist is possibly only the first of a long list. Australia's star players are at loggerheads with their cricket board over potential sponsor clashes in the Indian Premier League. Simon Taufel is indicating that he may not renew his umpiring contract with the ICC. Given the umpiring cock-ups we've seen recently and the number of umpires available/eligible, this is a huge problem for the ICC. I'm fairly sure quite a few English county sides are worried as well, since the star overseas players they have signed up, at huge costs, would miss a few weeks of their county commitments to play in the IPL. There was a suggestion by an administrator (possibly from the IPL committee) that the ICC's Future Tours Programme (FTP) could be changed to accomodate IPL tournaments.

But is it fair to assume that the BCCI is the only one which will be sitting pretty? I'm not so sure about it. As various commentators have observed, given the amount of money the franchise owners have pumped in, they will eventually demand that their players be more frequently available to them. Even if they agree to priority being given for international cricket commitments, the owners could insist that the players join the teams late and play IPL games instead of playing in warm-up games. Alternately, they could insist that players play for their IPL sides when they're rested or in-between tours. Will the IPL cannibalize the BCCI's domestic cricket tournaments? Eventually, could the IPL cannibalize international cricket per se to the extent that players will opt for the IPL over an international tour?

So what are the problems here?

• Availability of players: The IPL may insist, eventually when it is successful, that players need to spend more time playing their league rather than international cricket. Can cricket boards make it very clear to the IPL and the franchisees that their contracted players will be available only if they are fit and there are no international or domestic commitments? They may allow players who are dropped to participate in the IPL. Hence this implies that the board's international commitments and domestic cricket tournaments take precedence over the IPL tournaments.
  
• Players retiring to play in the IPL: Once a player retires from international cricket, they are no longer contracted to the cricket board. Hence the board cannot bar a player from playing in the IPL. At most, if the player is still playing domestic cricket, then his state association can do something about it.
  
• Umpires causing the same problems as players: Like Taufel is possibly hinting, he could join the IPL at the expense of his international umpiring career. Also, umpires could opt to umpire IPL games rather than tests or ODIs.
  
• Player/Umpire contracts being terminated since they want to be part of the ICL: This potentially results in a dwindling player/umpire pool for the cricket board since the current ICC policy is that the ICL is an unauthorized tournament.

Labels: australia, bcci, bond, book cricket, fleming, icc, india, indian cricket league, indian premier league, ipl 2008, new zealand, retire, stephen fleming, styris, taufel, twenty20, umpires

Thus spake Jagadish @ 6:00 pm | Sledge/Read 4 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Indian Premier Cricket League?

The race between the Indian Cricket League (their website finally loads up) and the BCCI's Indian Premier League has just started getting more interesting.

The BCCI's league boasts of the "Who's who" of international cricket (primarily current players, with a couple of former stars thrown in). Zee's Indian Cricket League boasts of the "Who was who" and "Who's that" of international and Indian domestic cricket.

The ICL has no access to most of the good cricket grounds in India since the BCCI has leases on/ownership of all of them. So it has to make do with unknown grounds. Ditto with the player roster. The ICL's major problem remains that they do not have a single star Indian player signed up. When Dinesh Mongia has the most internationals in your lineup of Indian players, you do have a serious problem!

The main problem both leagues are going to face is how to squeeze in the tournaments in between the various international commitments. I don't really know if the BCCI has some clue about how the IPL will shape up given that the star players will hardly be available over the next 1.5 years or so. The team owners, rights owners, sponsors, spectators, audiences, etc. will undoubtedly demand that the star players turn up for the IPL when they are not playing for India. The BCCI has just confirmed a triangular one-day series in Bangladesh next May to fill in the gaps.

Some pride will have to be swallowed, but I really don't see any scope for the two leagues co-existing and functioning according to the current hype. The ICL is meant to showcase former stars and wannabes. The IPL is meant to showcase the stars. The ICL doesn't have the sponsors, grounds and audiences, but they have the players who have the time to play. The IPL has the sponsors, grounds and audiences, but they don't have players who can spare the time.

Under these circumstances, perhaps the best option is to merge the two leagues and call it the "Indian Premier Cricket League" and have all games played at the IPCL ground with a lot of sponsorship by Reliance Industries Ltd.

Stop press! Reliable BCCI sources inform me that the BCCI, continuing with its theme of creating ODI series out of thin air, will be arranging for a Twenty20 international at the end of each day of the test matches against Pakistan. The BCCI's reasoning is apparently that since each Twenty20 game only takes up 3 hours and test match days end by 5 pm, there is enough time for a Twenty20 game before the cricketers eat & sleep. Rumours about the BCCI jettisoning the warm-up games in Australia and replacing them with Twenty20 internationals are yet to be confirmed.

Labels: bcci, india, indian cricket league, indian premier league, ipl 2008, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:47 pm | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]