Saturday evening, (depending on your time zone of choice) saw the announcement of cricket's next super tournament. An eight team Champions Trophy will bring together the best eight Twenty20 teams from India, Australia, England and South Africa.
However its announcement has led to more questions than answers and the waters have now been made even muddier by the IPL's 'commissioner' Lalit Modi.
The biggest debate that came out of Saturday's initial announcement was the issue over players and dual loyalties. Mike Hussey, to use as an example, played in the IPL for Chennai Super Kings, but also plays for Australian representatives Western Australia.
Initially we were led to believe that a verbal agreement was in place which would mean that those affected would play for their country of origin, meaning Hussey would appear for Western Australia. Modi however seems to believe that players will turn out for their IPL franchise first unless they decide to pay a 'relieving fee'.
Giles Clarke of the ECB is under the impression that Cricket Australia is formulating the rules and regulations of the competition. Why then, would they draw up rules that would harm their country's chance of winning the tournament? (And we all know how the Australian's don't like losing.)
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Modi has stated that any team who has a player that has participated in the rebel ICL will be automatically disqualified. This is of particular note as in English County cricket that could reduce the number of potential participants to just one third of all counties.
The ECB has already lost a court ruling this year on banning players who competed in the ICL and any such ban my lead to further hearings. It also suggests the reason as to why the tournament will be played in India or the Middle East and not England as has always been suggested.
All this leaves is a vacuum, for people to speculate, have their say and come up with more potential problems. Modi says he is unable to comment further til the BCCI look at the situation in a meeting on June 22, Clarke says the situation won't become any clearer til the ICC conference in July.
I, like many, fear that the tournament designed to bring the world's best teams together, may become a issue that only heightens cricket's already intense power struggle.
comments (3) write a comment »
write a new comment
4 months ago
I am extremely anxious that the huge influx of money into the sport will cause cricket to become more and more like football, driven by money, TV companies and with ever-decreasing loyalty amongst players.
This 'Champions League' could be a further step towards a glamour and money-propelled sport.
4 months ago
I think Cricket is growing by every day with the kind of money coming in....But the Question remains is the National Integration ??
IPL was a huge success and there is no doubt that Champions League will follow the same league , but will it harm the International Cricket between National sides that is yet to be seen , because the kind of attention this Franchise System is getting there are hardly any takers for the national play.
Take an example of the Tri Series between INDIA , PAKISTAN AND BANGLADESH , there seems to be no interest among the people about this series though it features the most Ferious battle between INDIA V/S PAKISTAN.
I hope that cricket still remains a game which is fought between the countries and not the franchise teams ...Loyalty factor can't be judged right now , but with the kind of money it may change
3 months ago
Capitalism is good. Too much nationalism is bad.
As far as I know, capitalism never created a systematic infrastructure to gas people. Too much nationalism did and continue to do that in different forms.
As Marx said almost 150 years ago, boundaries will vanish, because greed is universal.
And I think its a good thing.
write a new comment