| 
Posts and words
Loading ...
icl
Bond to return?
By Will last year, at the end of May, No Comments; be the first!
Looks like Shane Bond could return to Test cricket, possibly as early as August. The “rebel” Indian Cricket League is, a little predictably, dying on its knees, unable to equal or rise out of the Indian Premier League’s bolshy (and unbelievably successful) shadow.
Daryl Tuffey and Lou Vincent might also be back.
No Comments »Tuffey has been offered a termination and after consulting with lawyers has accepted it. The paper reports that Vincent has also quit, and while it is expected Bond will do the same, it says that might take longer in his case.
Heath Mills, the head of the NZ Players’ Association, said scrapping the existing contracts would probably mean the three would not get what was owed to them, but he added that there was no guarantee there would be another season of ICL anyway.
Bond was non committal, but said that he “hoped something will happen soon,” adding: “My training is going really well and I want to get back into it.”
Butt on a roll
By Will 2 years ago, mid-October, No Comments; be the first!
Another press conference. More dull, mundane and probably inane quotes to listen to, record, transcribe and hack. At least, that was probably the sentiments of most Pakistani journalists when they rounded on Lahore and descended on Ijaz Butt’s first press conference as Pakistan’s chairman. And what a press conference it was.
Just when my colleague was about to leave, and seemingly unprovoked, Butt spilled forth the sort of juicy quotes some journalists wait a lifetime for. “The ICL think they have a good case” was dispatched through the covers. “The ICC are worried about the ICL” appeared to be drifting down the leg-side, but nevertheless it was smudged through midwicket with power and flair. The poor journalists didn’t have a hope of stopping him. Oh, and not forgetting his coup-de-grace – the most delicate of leg-glances to announce that, yes, the ICC are thinking of merging the Indian Premier League and the ICL (its unsanctioned cousin) to form one mammoth league. Yes, indeed. (If you’re not aware, the ICL is unofficial. The IPL is official and recognised by the ICC. The ICL want to be official. The ICL doesn’t think the ICC can have one official league and one unofficial league, but neither can it have two official leagues, it seems. So it could all end up in court, and the lawyers will all get very, very rich indeed.)
This was a press conference of dizzying revelations, almost none of it planned or expected. Quite what the ICC are thinking now is anyone’s guess, but it’s safe to assume that they’ll be up most of the night wondering just what Mr Butt had for his breakfast. I’m thinking it was two Weetabix and three boiled eggs.
There was more, too. Geoff Lawson, the coach, was sacked (not until April next year though. So he’s got six months in which to try and convince his players, if not himself, that he’s the right man for the job.)
Pure entertainment.
No Comments »Stanford close to luring ECB
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of April, 59 Comments »
Allen Stanford and Lalit Modi. Two entirely different characters, both from opposite ends of the world – geographically and, arguably, morally – but both with a shared love of money and cricket. Why do I worry less about the Wild West cowboy, and more about Modi’s modus operandi?
Perhaps it’s because he’s American and has no historical connection to a cricket board. Maybe it’s because he appears to have no dirty agenda to the politics of the sport: he’s seemingly happy to pile money into the flayling West Indies cricket, and anyone else who wants to join in the fun is more than welcome. This sounds naive – of course, billionaires crave and adore money: it is their driving force – but his come-follow-me attitude is refreshing and progressive, which cannot be said of Modi. Modi’s business is power and politics; the IPL has already made him millions, but it is a vehicule to global dominance. We’ve seen this season how the ECB have been tied up in knots banning (and subsequently unbanning) various players who represented the Indian Cricket League – the antichrist to the sanctioned IPL – which demonstrates just how much power the BCCI wields.
Anyway, I digress. I like Mr Stanford and am quite excited by what he could do to counter Modi’s unquenchable thirst for dominance. He has met with the ECB – significantly, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board, Dr Julian Hunte, was also present – to finalise plans for an England v West Indies All Stars XI later this year (and possibly running over five years). The matches themselves aren’t too significant, but it could signal the start of a business relationship which expands far beyond any of our imaginings. Stanford’s 20/20 in the Caribbean was a rollicking success – some say he should be in charge of ICC’s World Cups – so it’ll be fascinating to see what he and England come up with.
59 Comments »The Indian dimension
By Emma 2 years ago, mid-March, 1 Comment »
It has been somewhat of a double whammy for county cricket, and not one that could have been predicted by the end of last season. As Sussex were celebrating their second consecutive Championship victory in September, the only possible concern Chris Adams and co. could have had about their international berth would be which player to keep. Now, thanks to the incomprehensible forelock-tugging and deference that boards around the world are giving to a Test nation that only woke up to Twenty20 when they won the World Championship, having already let a private enterprise set up in the format they had snubbed, Mushtaq Ahmed may well have worn a Sharks shirt for the last time. But with only a month to go until the season starts, the nearest to clarity I’ve seen for clubs on the ICL is Andrew McGlashan’s list over at Cricinfo. The medley of pre-stance Kolpaks, post-stance Kolpaks, UK nationals, EU nationals and Internationals requiring NOCs has left a bit of a muddle.
So what does this spell? Well, at some point, there is going to be a lawsuit. Maybe more than one. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about the legal situation, but the PCA and their international equivalents will have been getting legal advice since the ECB’s statement last week. What will be most interesting will be who ends up suing who. Well, interesting for a law student. None of it is in the interest of English cricket.
As if a whole swath of maybe-banned-maybe-nots wasn’t enough, the sheer salaries and brevity of commitment being offered by the IPL are easily more of an attraction to top class internationals than six months drudgery in some of England’s colder climes. Shaun Pollock, for a while linked with Warwickshire, was only interested in playing the Twenty20s. Of the many Antipodean retirements of the last few months, how many are headed here? This of course is leaving aside the possibility that English players wont up sticks and move to Bangalore. When players with as little international exposure as car-park call up Luke Pomersbach are being offered $50,000 for a few games graft, surely some of the international fringe must be eyeing their bank balances with jealousy.
Considering the outcry over the last few seasons at the invasion of international players, the new position seems far more worrying. With a dearth of players available to fill the overseas slots, there will be a widening in the gap between the ‘rich’ counties and those without the cash to compete for what names are available. To think that some time last year Ricky Ponting was bemoaning the grind of international cricket, and voicing concerns that too much of the shortest format was being played. Ironically, the ICL should have had little impact on English cricket in terms of timing, while the IPL runs in direct conflict with parts of the season. It is impossible to know what the long-term impacts are going to be. In the meantime, coaches around the country will be filling in team sheets in pencil.
1 Comment »Â£100,000 for six weeks work: welcome to ICL
By Will 3 years ago, at the end of August, 3 Comments »
The rollercoaster that is the Indian Cricket League continues to gather momentum, and news reaches me from Dougie Brown, commentating on Test Match Special this afternoon, that some players have been offered in excess of £100,000 for their participation. An extraordinary sum of money.
But all this amounts to very little when you consider that the BCCI own all the grounds in India and therefore have banned any ICL match from taking place at any of their venues. Just where is this ICL heading, and at what cost to the game in India?
3 Comments »