20th August to 26th August, 2007: It is everybody's Business

Written by HW Edit

Wednesday, 29 August 2007

When ODI cricket was first launched, did it end up dominating almost all of the cricket news as Twenty20 is now? Possibly not. Then again, it didn't have innumerable organizations and suited-booted wheeler-dealers working overtime to invent new ways to milk it. That, Shane Warne and some invigorating on-field action feature in this week's News Roundup.

The multi-million dollar dog fight

The ICL- BCCI story has turned into a regular slugfest, with counter punches and court cases being thrown almost everyday.

The ICL went to court challenging the Board of Control for Cricket in India's, well, control over cricket in India, looking to break down the monopoly, prevent it's players from losing the jobs they hold given to them based on their cricket, and while they were at it, also take a shot at getting the BCCI disallowed from using the national flag.

Following the eye for an eye policy, the BCCI let out feelers about launching an 'official' Twenty20 league of their own, involving big name cricketers from around the world. If the BCCI does indeed go ahead and manage this, it is bound to be a fairly significant something, given the money power at hand, and the safety cover of the 'offical' tag. But let us not even go into weighing the power scales of what is clearly degenerating into nothing short of a crude fist fight over a pot of money.

All these events, however, serve to show exactly how significant is the West Indies Cricket Board's attitude of co-operaton and co-existence with billionaire Allen Standford's multi-million dollar league.

Paradigm changes

When Allen Stanford started the Stanford 20/20 league in the Windies and saw it rake in the big bucks he seems to have triggered off a trend that is going to be difficult to pull back - not that there is any clear evidence as yet to explain why it should be pulled back.

Even as the ICL and BCCI indulge in some mud-wrestling, elsewhere, bigger & potentially far more impactful events are being set in motion. Cricket Australia is considering a proposal by international sports management giants IMG to start a Twenty20 league with privately owned and managed teams. The teams will play in a domestic league, with the top sides going on to compete in an international league with top ranking teams (can we start saying 'clubs'?) from other countries.

A flood of questions that inevitably crop up are met with a few answers. How much more cricket can the players take, is the first of the lot. The proposed answer to that is to have two (or possibly three) completely different teams for each major version (assuming it is time enough to qualify Twenty20 as a major version of the game) a predominantly different set of domestic players. The second major question is the acceptance and adoption of this idea by the boards from different countries. The answer to that is that thing that makes the world go round - money. Most cricket boards around the world are looking for efficient ways to milk Cricket's new cash cow, and this could be the channel they have been looking for.

While there is no official word on it yet, a meeting between Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland and the BCCI's marketing brain Lalit Modi later this week is likely to kickstart a series of talks and conferences between the heads of Cricketing boards from around the world.

Hong Kong Super celebs

It seems likely that Shane Warne, along with Glen Mc'grath, Shahid Afridi and Virender Sehwag will form part of an All Star XI to compete with nine other teams representing their nations in the annual Hong Kong Super Sixes tournament, to be played on the 27th and the 28th of October.

The tournament has been an annual fixture for several years now, and has provided various current and former cricketers to go out there and have a bit of a tonk without too much pressure. While there has been no official confirmation yet, going by Warnie's apparent inclination to float around cricket circuits across the world and turn up wherever people are willing to pay to watch him bowl, it may not come as a big surprise if he does play.

The olive branch

It can't be too pleasant for anyone to take up the reins of a ship on a rather stormy and tempestuous boat and find that his finest sailor has abandoned ship. Handling a side whose leading fast bowlers are either being suspended, reprimanded, fined or treated for injuries is tough, but it gets tougher when your leading all rounder and leading batsman ditch you and defect to a rebel league.

So, not surprisingly, Geoff Lawson has been making attempts to bring Mohammad Yousuf back from the poisoned ICL apple. Lawson has expressed hope that Yousuf will change his mind and come back to playing cricket for Pakistan not only because of the tremendous value he adds to Pakistan's batting but also for the influence he is likely to have on promising youngsters.

In the meantime, Lawson has roped in Australian Rugby Union trainer David Dwyer to try and spruce up the fitness levels of the Pakistan team, and imbibe in them the 'Rugby' attitude, possibly hoping to see the Pakistani team roughing and toughing on the field way and grounding their opposition.

The Scorecard

In the middle of all this mayhem, the good news, thankfully, comes from the on field events. The India-England ODI series is shaping up nicely, with two evenly balanced teams putting up some competitive and well balanced cricket. Currently, the 7 match series stands at 2-1 in favour of the Englishmen.

India started off on a rather limp note, first letting Cook (102) and Ian Bell (126*) smash their way to 288, and then being bundled out for 184 themselves.

The second game, however, proved to be a cracker. Getting rid of their early blues, India put up 329 (Sachin 99, Dravid 92 off 63 balls). England started off fine, lost their way in the middle, and then got Twenty20 star Dmitri Mascrenhas (52 off 39 balls) to slog their way to a tight, 9 run defeat.

The third and the most recent ODI looked set to upstage that before some fine fielding and ridiculous running lured it down the anti-climax route. England batted first and swung quite intriguingly between phases of free scoring and losing wickets in clusters to end at 281-8 to set the game up nicely. A vintage Sachin- Saurav opening stand meant that whether the match turned out to be a close thrilling finish or not, there was already something to take back from this game. After the early heroics that carried on till about the 37th over, the lower middle order abruptly gave the fight up as India went rapidly from a 'great fight, but tough luck' performance to a 'what a waste of an opportunity' show.

The highlight of the series, however, is turning out to be the rivalry building up between young leg-spinning turk Piyush Chawla and Kevin Pietersen. Chawla picked the batsman up twice in two games, outwitting him completely with a flipper and a googly respectively. Pietersen is not likely to take too kindly to this and wil come up looking to settle scores.

Meanwhile, down south, South Africa notched up a predictable 3-0 win over hosts Zimbabwe in a three match ODI series. Although the series was predictably one sided, the good news was that Zimbabwe managed to cross 200 in each game, reaching as much as 295 in the third game. The first two games were completely one-sided, with Zimbabwe putting up 206 and 247, with South Africa chasing it down easily, winning by 5 and 8 wickets respectively. The third game was more tightly contested, with South Africa smashing 323, but Zimbabwe went down fighting, putting up 295. The Zimbabweans had more to take home from this series than expected, with four 50+ scores, one hundred ( from Taibu) and one 48.

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