The Cricket "Champions League": A Competition To See the Most Powerful Board

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.