By IANS,
New Delhi : The Indian cricket board in a bid to promote the Indian Premier League (IPL) are using strong arm tactics against the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL), but South African all rounder Jacques Kallis feels that all these leagues cropping up will ultimately benefit the game in the country.
Kallis, playing for Bangalore Royal Challengers in the multi million dollar IPL sanctioned by the International Cricket Council (ICC), said both the leagues provide a learning base for the domestic players who get a chance to share the dressing room with some of the international stars.
“Both IPL and ICL are beneficial for Indian cricket because it is the domestic players who will get to learn a lot from it. In both the tournaments they get to share the dressing room with some of the legendry players and I feel that it is a good learning experience,” said Kallis during a media interaction at the team’s hotel here Thursday, a day after his team lost by 10 runs to Delhi Daredevils.
“Some guys are yet to play international cricket and at a young age they are playing with and against some of the top stars. If it would have been during my time, then I would have been immensely successful,” he added.
The 32-year-old all-rounder from Cape Town also said that the shortest version of the game is the ideal format to make cricket a global sport.
“The Twenty20 is the future of the one-day cricket and one-dayers will suffer a bit. And I don’t know how long one-dayers will survive.
“If you want to take the sport globally, then Twenty20 is the best format. It takes three hours to get over and that is less than the duration of a baseball match in the US,” he said.
Kallis also rubbished claims that Twenty20 is designed for young cricketers and said:”Anybody who can play well can perform in Twenty20. We do a lot of fitness programmes and are as young as the other players.”
Pakistan’s 30-year-old batsman Misbah-ul-Haq also chipped in and said: “If Twenty20 was designed for the youngsters then I could have never played the Twenty20 World Championship.”