ICL - The end of the road?

Premier League
Rebel Indian Twenty20 league hit by economic crisis
• Next month's tournament has been cancelled
• ICL insist competition will take place later this year
David Hopps The Guardian, Thursday 12 February 2009

The survival of the rebel Indian Cricket League has been thrown into doubt by the cancellation of next month's tournament, with an admission that the global economic crisis is partly to blame.

Dean Jones, the former Australian batsman and an ICL board member, revealed that the tournament was off and conceded: "The financial crisis played a part. But the ICL will be played later in the year – I'm very confident of that."

Mounting uncertainty about the ICL's future will be met with delight by the England and Wales Cricket Board, which has had to fight off approaches for both its players and its umpires, and which has suffered fraught relations with India because of its inability to select anyone who takes part in the unsanctioned tournament.

Reports suggest that the ICL's founder and chairman, Subhash Chandra, is now considering turning the event into an annual, international Twenty20 tournament in November – with an England XI among his priorities. Chandra, a one-time rice exporter who began India's satellite television revolution when he launched Zee TV, hopes that an annual, unofficial world Twenty20 will counter faltering advertising revenues and even persuade the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council, to drop its opposition.

Paul Nixon, the former England wicketkeeper, was the only county player involved in the tournament last year after a successful campaign by the ECB to oppose participation. The ECB has warned that ICL players may harm their chances of England selection and has given counties winter grants of £75,000 to encourage a move to annual contracts.

Nixon said: "Leicestershire were very happy for me to report back for pre-season training on 1 April. Now I'll be reporting earlier and in thermals with the rest of the lads. There is no chance [Chandra] will walk away from this. He has spent a huge amount, built grounds, flown in groundsmen, erected floodlights. What he has achieved is phenomenal."

News of the cancellation broke as ICL organisers said they had identified English county cricket as their chief recruiting ground for umpires, claiming they had lined up two more senior officials to join the tournament that will now not take place. Himanshu Mody, the business head of the ICL, had insisted that two more umpires were about to follow the example of Allan Jones and take early retirement in favour of a few weeks at the ICL.

Mody says in the March edition of The Wisden Cricketer: "We are still looking at England as a recruiting ground for umpires. In fact, we are in the process of bringing in two more English umpires to officiate in ICL. We approached English first-class umpires because we were keen to maintain international standards."

The ECB has responded by introducing 12-month contracts for all its first-class umpires from 1 January this year, as well as increasing annual salaries to between £35,000 and £50,000, to ensure that any exodus to the ICL can be met with immediate removal from the list.

Any collapse of the ICL would privately disappoint Englandís umpiring fraternity, which vales it not just as a potential retirement nest egg, but for its ability to draw a financial settlement from the ECB that is unparalleled in county history; if you wanted to know the best cheap digs in town, it was always advisable to ask an umpire.

Allan Jones, 61, a former international umpire who did break ranks, and accepted a contract until 2010, has championed the ICL as a perfect retirement gift for umpires who have spent their best years and more battered by a succession of bad English summers.

"I was a little fed up living out of a suitcase,íí he said. ICL is the most fun I have had standing up. The cricket and the crowds are fantastic".

If the ICL morphes into an annual tournament, rather than the overkill of 3-4 tournaments a year, it would not provide enough revenue for umpires to turn their back on the county circuit.

Instead, they would have little choice but to remain, forced to deal with what they are adamant is a decline in standards of behaviour as county players chase record prize money.

To counter the rewards of Indian Twenty20, the winners of this season's championship will get £500,000, a fivefold increase on 2008, with two-thirds going to the players. And players competing in Twenty20 cricket will have their eyes on the first prize of $5m (£3.5m).

One senior umpire said: "It's more than my job is worth to say this openly, but dissent in county cricket has hit an all-time low. It's worse than in Test cricket. When the TV cameras are there, no player likes to be caught cheating. But we often umpire without cameras and have to deal with players chasing money they are not used to. It wouldn't be surprising if an umpire or two gambled on the fact that the ICL would be around for a few years yet and decided to opt for an easy life."

Would anyone really notice if it did fold?

Big_Bad_Bob wrote:Would anyone really notice if it did fold?

All the players banned from international cricket

IPL can kill the ICL stone dead now by offering an amnesty to ICL players on the proviso that they don't sign up to any other satellite/rebel 20/20 league

'Merger' = a hostile takeover bid.

Companies that are utterly dead in the water, with no prospects, aren't even worth a takeover bid. They just fold.

Hard to see whey there will be another BCCI/ICC/ICL meet in SA later on?

This should be interesting. Lets see if BCCI bans SRT for this or prevents this match from happening or if it pulls out of the Kiwi series?

Tendulkar to play with ICL player in NZ

Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar is surely going to raise a few eyebrows when he takes the field on Friday for New Zealand Masters along with rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) player Hamish Marshall in a Twenty20 exhibition match against Australia Masters.

The exhibition match is a joint venture between New Zealand Cricket and New Zealand Cricket Players' Association (NZCA) and will see a host of former cricket stars from both Australia and New Zealand.

The match will be a curtain raiser for the second Twenty20 international between India and New Zealand here at the Westpac Stadium. Dinesh Karthik will be playing for Australian Masters. While Tendulkar is not part of the Twenty20 squad, Karthik will not be in the eleven for Friday's international.

Marshall, who played for ICL Royal Bengal Tigers, will play with Tendulkar in the New Zealand Masters team, said NZCA chief executive Heath Mills.

The Indian cricket board has always adopted a strict stance towards the ICL players and last year didn't allow VVS. Laxman to play for Nottinghamshire because the county had an ICL player.

New Zealand have eight ICL players and at present four of them — Marshall, Shane Bond, Chris Harris and Daryl Tuffey — are playing in domestic cricket.

Dean Jones. What.a.tool.

Boys 2 Men

More on this...

How small a dick must Lalit Modi have if he thinks this would be a threat?



Tendulkar, Karthik withdrawn from T20

Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik were withdrawn by the Indian management from the Masters Twenty20 game between New Zealand and Australia in Wellington.

The Masters game was meant to be a curtain raiser for the second T20 between New Zealand and India.

Tendulkar and Karthik were withdrawn because they would play alongside Hamish Marshall, who has played in the unauthorised ICL. Hamish Marshall was part of the New Zealand Cricket Players' Association (NZCPA) side.

This is not the first instance of BCCI disallowing players to play alongside ICL players. Last year, VVS Laxman was advised against playing for English county side Nottinghamshire because the county had fielded some ICL players.

Our Indian friends here must be proud to see the way the BBCI is safeguarding world cricket.

JGK wrote:More on this...

How small a dick must Lalit Modi have if he thinks this would be a threat?



Tendulkar, Karthik withdrawn from T20

Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik were withdrawn by the Indian management from the Masters Twenty20 game between New Zealand and Australia in Wellington.

The Masters game was meant to be a curtain raiser for the second T20 between New Zealand and India.

Tendulkar and Karthik were withdrawn because they would play alongside Hamish Marshall, who has played in the unauthorised ICL. Hamish Marshall was part of the New Zealand Cricket Players' Association (NZCPA) side.

This is not the first instance of BCCI disallowing players to play alongside ICL players. Last year, VVS Laxman was advised against playing for English county side Nottinghamshire because the county had fielded some ICL players.

I was looking for the precise BCCI reactions when I 'lard'-bumped the thread........

taipan wrote:Our Indian friends here must be proud to see the way the BBCI is safeguarding world cricket.

Who or what is BBC-I?

And since when did BCCI care a gaffe for what Indian fans think? Fans have nothing to do with how BCCI plays it's games.....

Would have been interesting to see what the BCCI would have done if it was a charity event.

JGK wrote:Would have been interesting to see what the BCCI would have done if it was a charity event.

Stolen the money?