By IANS
Mumbai : The breakaway Indian Cricket League (ICL) Wednesday named the players of the six teams that will compete in its first tournament starting Nov 30 at Panchkula near Chandigarh.
“We are thrilled to make this announcement as we reckon this is the most important piece of information before the tournament begins,” Kapil Dev, chairman of the ICL executive board, said while announcing the names here.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India has said that anyone – player, umpire or any other official/association – associating himself with ICL would not get any benefits from it (BCCI).
The tournament, promoted by Subhash Chnadra’s Essel Group, will have 20 matches and the final is slated for Dec 16 at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula. The winning team will receive $1 million.
Besides Kapil, Chandra has signed in Kiran More, Sandeep Patil, former England skipper Tony Greig and ex-Australia batsman Dean Jones, among others, for the tournament.
Said Kapil: “We have ensured the teams are balanced in every way and receive best facilities in terms of coaching, showcasing their talent and exposure to international cricket.”
Each team will have five international players besides a dedicated support staff consisting of a coach, a trainer, a physiotherapist, a dietician and a media manager.
Practice matches will be held at the Tau Devilal Stadium in Chandigarh, Lahari Resorts in Hyderabad/Chennai, CCFC Club in Kolkata, Teri Oval in Gurgaon, and Railway Grounds, Lower Parel, in Mumbai.
The matches will be telecast on Zee Sports channel of the Zee group, which is also owned by Chandra.
ICL is seen as an establishment-threatening, parallel tournament designed on the lines of Australian media mogul Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC) of the late 1970s that shook the cricket world, especially the Australian cricket board.
There is another similarity between ICL and WSC. Packer started the WSC after the Australian board denied his Channel Nine the domestic rights while Chandra’s ICL comes after he lost the bid to telecast India matches twice in recent times.
Last year, however, Zee won the BCCI’s five-year overseas rights by bidding $219 million. But the company scrapped the deal, almost two months after the launch of ICL April 3, citing government stipulations for compulsorily sharing feed with Doordarshan.
ICL will start with the Twenty20 format and progress to the 50 over format.
Teams:
CHENNAI SUPERSTARS: Stuart Law (Australia), Ian Harvey (Australia), V. Devendran (Chennai), R. Sathish (Chennai), Hemang Badani (Chennai), Chris Read (England), Tamil Kumaran (Chennai), Hemant Kumar (Chennai), Russel Arnold (Sri Lanka), Sriram Sridharan (Chennai), Syed Mohammed (Chennai), Shabbir Ahmed (Pakistan), Thiru Kumaran (Chennai), J. Hareish (Chennai), Vasanth Sarvanan (Tamil Nadu), R. Jesuraj (Tamil Nadu), Sanjeev Martin, G. Vignesh (Chennai) and P. Vivek
Coach: Michael Bevan (Australia)
HYDERABAD HEROES: Inzamam-ul-Haq (Pakistan), Anirudh Singh (Hyderabad), Ambati Rayudu (Hyderabad), Abdul Razzak (Pakistan), Azhar Mahmood (Pakistan), Syed Shahubuddin (Hyderabad), Chris Harris (New Zealand), Nicky Boje (South Africa), Stuart Binny (Karnataka), Inder Shekhar Reddy (Hyderabad), Vinay Kumar (Hyderabad), Ibrahim Khaleel (Hyderabad), Kaushik Reddy (Hyderabad), Bheema Rao, Alfred Absolom (Hyderabad), Shashank Nag (Hyderabad), P.S. Niranjan (Hyderabad), Baburao Yadav, Zakaria Zuffri (Assam/Railways)
Coach: Moin Khan (Pakistan)
KOLKATA TIGERS: Craig McMillan (New Zealand), Parviz Aziz (Assam), Darren Maddy (England), Abhishek Jhunjhunwala (Kolkata), Lance Klusener (South Africa), Rohan Gavaskar (Bengal), Upul Chandana (Sri Lanka), Deep Dasgupta (Bengal), Abu Nechim (Assam), Shiv Sagar Singh (Bengal), Boyd Rankin (Ireland), Mihir Diwakar (Jharkhand), Rajiv Kumar (Kolkata), Sayed Akhlakh Ahmed (Kolkata), Subhomoy Das (Kolkata), Sujay Tarafdar (Assam), Pritam Das (Assam), Anshu Jain, Ali H. Zaidi
Coach: Darryl Cullinan (South Africa)
DELHI JETS: Marvan Atapattu (Sri Lanka), Niall O’Brien (Ireland), Mohnish Mishra (Madhya Pradesh), Taufeeq Umar (Pakistan), Abbas Ali (Madhya Pradesh), Paul Nixon (England), Dale Benkenstein (South Africa), J.P. Yadav (Railways), Ali Murtaza (Uttar Pradesh), T. Sudhindra (Madhya Pradesh), Abid Nabi Ahanger (Jammu and Kashmir), Sachin Dholpure (Madhya Pradesh), Abhishek Tamrakar (Madhya Pradesh), Shalabh Srivastav (Uttar Pradesh), Abhishek Sharma (Uttar Pradesh), Dishant Yagnik (Udaipur), Dhruv Mahajan (Jammu and Kashmir), Abhinav Bali and Raghav Sachdev
Coach: Madan Lal (India)
MUMBAI CHAMPS: Brian Lara (West Indies), Vikram Solanki (England), Robin Morris (Mumbai), Nathan Astle (New Zealand), Kiran Powar (Mumbai), Shreyas Khanolkar (Mumbai), J. Van der Wath (South Africa), Rakesh Patel (Gujarat), Avinash Yadav (Mumbai), Nantie Hayward (South Africa), Subhojit Paul (Kolkata), Dheeraj Jadhav (Pune), Anupam Sanklecha (Mumbai), Ranjeet Kirid (Pune), Pushkaraj Joshi (Pune), Suyash Burkul (Maharashtra), Raviraj Patil (Maharashtra), Nikhil Mandale (Mumbai) and Sridher Iyer
Coach: Sandip Patil (India)
CHANDIGARH LIONS: Chris Cairns (New Zealand), Sarabjeet Singh (Punjab), Imran Farhat (Pakistan), Dinesh Mongia (Punjab), Hamish Marshall (New Zealand), T.P. Singh (Punjab), Andrew Hall (South Africa), Reetinder Singh Sodhi (Punjab), Rajesh Sharma (Punjab), Ishan Malhotra (Punjab), Daryl Tuffey (New Zealand), Sumit Kalia (Punjab), Chetan Sharma (Punjab), Manish Sharma (Punjab), Love Ablish (Punjab), Bipul Sharma (Punjab), Karanveer Singh (Punjab), Amit Uniyal (Punjab), Gaurav Gupta (Jammu and Kashmir), and Harpreet Singh (Punjab)
Coach: Balwinder Sandhu (India)