By IANS
Melbourne : With cricketing nations swept away by the billion dollar Indian Premier League (IPL), Australian captain Ricky Ponting said that International Cricket Council (ICC) will now need to make an adjustment in its international programmes to fit in the new tournament, the media reported here Friday.
“There were some studies done in India recently on the Twenty20 game and it was something like 87 percent of cricket fans in India had Twenty20 as their favourite version,” Ponting was quoted as saying by The Australian.
“As I said a week ago, I really do think there has to be some time carved out of the international programme to fit this game in. I read a few things in the paper a couple of days later that some people had a laugh and a joke about it, but I think everyone now understands that with the amount of money being bandied around and spent over the last couple of days, there are going to be some tough decisions to be made from international cricketers,” Ponting said.
“For the betterment of the game worldwide, the ICC and the home bodies really do have to look at how they can make this thing fit in because if it doesn’t fit into the international programme, you could see the loss of lots of very good Test and one-day players giving it all up and going to play Twenty20,” he said.
According to The Australian, the ICC’s response following a scheduling summit in Malaysia this week involving the chief executives of the 10 Test nations, was:
“There has been media speculation about creating a window within the Future Tours Programme (FTP) for IPL matches. The FTP is in place until 2012 and there was no suggestion by the BCCI that such a window should be considered or created prior to that.
“The ICC will consult with the BCCI to ensure that anti-corruption and anti-doping processes are put in place for the IPL and that a code of ethics be established for team owners.”