Is IPL a threat to English Cricket ?
March 31st, 2008Shane Warnes exit from Hanpshire last week after his long asscoiation of eight years last week, and warnings from the Professional Cricketers’ Association,
the IPL are now seen as a major threat to the future of the sport in
this country. Inder Singh Bindra, who sits on the IPL’s governing
committee, told the Daily Telegraph that it was in their interests to
maintain the stability of world cricket.
“We cannot live in isolation,” Bindra added. “There is
always apprehension when you start something new, but we have put in
safeguards to protect the game. Players cannot appear without the
permission of their own national board, and even if they retire, there
is still a two-year cooling-off period before they become eligible.
“If
there is a threat to the game,” Bindra added, “it comes from the unauthorized tournaments, because they are operating without
constraints. In fact, if we had not started the IPL, there would have
been many more players going to the rebel leagues. Some of the smaller
international teams would have been wiped out, because their boards
would not have been able to resist.”
After the success of the IPL - who have already earned more than a
billion dollars before the first ball has even been bowled - other
boards around the world have begun investigating their own ways of
benefiting from the 20-over boom - Daily Telegraph reported.
On April 9, the England and Wales Cricket Board will
consider radical plans to split the Twenty20 Cup into two different
competitions from 2010 onwards. More immediately, ECB chairman Giles
Clarke hopes that the cup’s rules will be changed to allow counties to
field three overseas players as early as this summer.
The
men running the IPL might be expected to resent these attempts to
muscle in on their territory. Bindra, in fact, says he welcomes the
expansion of the IPL concept. “We want to work together with other
boards to make the official structure of domestic and international
cricket as strong as possible,” he said. “The ECB is a good example,
because the rebels are already looking to expand into grounds in
England.
“They will need billions of dollars to
compete with our infrastructure in India, but they could probably buy
up a countryside venue over there for a couple of million.”
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Clearly,
Bindra was referring to the threat from the Indian Cricket League.
Bankrolled by the broadcasting network Zee TV, ICL are on the verge of
finishing their second 20-over competition in India. Their
representatives are known to have met the owners of private grounds in
England.
The ECB have refused to register five of
the ICL players, including the South Africans Justin Kemp, Andrew Hall
and Johannes van der Wath. The cases are now under appeal, but if the
ECB stick to their hard-line stance, they are likely to face a
“restraint of trade” suit.
A lawyer for the ICL
players said yesterday: “The Warne case is significant because the ECB
claim one of the reasons they are opposed to the ICL is because it has
the potential to clash with the English county season. Now they will
have to show a good reason why the IPL is not subject to the same
objection.”
Ip[l is truly not a threat to English or any Cricket - its the format or rather the future of cricket.
Tags: English Cricket, future of cricket, ICL, IPL, threatPosted in Cricket News, IPL News |