By Qaiser Mohammad Ali, IANS
Mumbai : The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is “apprehensive” that the Indian Premier League (IPL) will steal the thunder of the English County Championships as their dates are set to clash when India’s inter-city league starts in April.
ECB, which has pledged support to the Board of Control for Cricket India (BCCI) on IPL, is wary as its domestic cricket season also begins in mid April, when the maiden edition of the IPL — featuring players from all 10 Test-playing countries — is tentatively scheduled to start.
ECB feels that all its top players may head for India, leaving the domestic tournaments poorer.
“The ECB is apprehensive and it has conveyed to us its apprehension about the timing of the IPL. It feels that its own county competitions would be affected as even English players are scheduled to play in the IPL,” a top BCCI official, who is also a member of the IPL governing council, told IANS here.
“We are trying to work out such dates that do not clash with the English county programme. So, the starting date of the IPL may be either advanced by 10 or 15 days from the tentatively proposed mid-April start,” said the official who attended the first governing council meeting here Thursday.
Significantly, no English player figures among the 29 foreign players who have so far signed to play in the IPL, as the ECB has not given them permission. Since the IPL has support of all the boards, players have to get their permission before signing.
However, some of the biggest stars from Australia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa and West Indies have already signed. They include Shane Warne, Glen McGrath, Stephen Fleming, Mahela Jayawardene, Sanath Jayasuriya, Graeme Smith, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammed Yousuf, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Shaun Pollock.
ECB is very particular about its national tournaments. It meticulously draws the fixtures of these as also those involving its national team against visiting teams during the English summer. The domestic matches and the Tests/One-Day Internationals are played simultaneously in England.
The fixtures of the English domestic tournaments are usually announced in October. But they have so far not been disclosed, clearly because of ECB’s “apprehension” of the impact IPL may have on its domestic season.
The IPL was launched Sep 13 in New Delhi in the presence of the heads of all 10 Test-paying countries as well as International Cricket Council (ICC) president Ray Mali.
IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi said Thursday that the governing council has decided the first edition would be a 44-day affair, featuring eight franchises, or teams named after Indian cities. Each team will play seven home and away games against all others.
Modi, also a BCCI vice-president, said that each team would have 16 players, including four from abroad. The teams will include players registered with the BCCI and drawn from the centrally contracted pool.