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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.”
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 »Twenty20 Champions League
By Scott 3 years ago, at the start of September, 1 Comment »
Momentum is gathering for an international Twenty20 Champions League to take place involving teams from India, Australia, England and South Africa. This could be an interesting way to expand the game and also it would provide much needed financial stimulus to first-class teams, although there might be pressure on to include privately owned franchises as well.
I personally don’t care that much for the ultra-short version of the game, but as something that keeps the game in the public eye it can’t be a bad thing. What could be a bad thing is the conflict between first class teams and international boards over the availability of International players.
The joker in the pack is the Indian Cricket League. We live in interesting times!
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 »Shameless self-promotion post
By Scott 3 years ago, at the start of April, 3 Comments »
I’ve started up a more generic Australian minded sports blog which will house cricket minded posts that have me coming off a longer run up then is usual for here. I’ll still be posting here; it’s just that the essays will go up at my new site. I’ve opened the batting with a long post about how the proposed Indian Cricket League might impact on Australian cricket.
3 Comments »