By IANS,
London : England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is ready with its own Champions League Twenty20 tournament with financial backing from the royal family of Abu Dhabi.
According to a report in The Sunday Telegraph, the Abu Dhabi royal family is ready to give the ECB a financial assistance to the tune of £750 million over a period of 10 years.
ECB and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) were in conflict over the BCCI-proposed Champions League comprising top two Twenty20 teams from domestic championships of Australia, South Africa, India and England.
BCCI had warned ECB that counties having the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) players will not be allowed to participate in the tournament tentatively scheduled in September-October this month. The counties were adamant that they cannot leave out any players from their team.
ECB are confident they will have a Champions League where their domestic finalists in the Twenty20 Cup — Kent and Middlesex — will play alongside Indian Premier League (IPL) teams.
The tournament would be staged in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah in early October if the talks are fruitful. It is also said that talks are at an “advanced stage” as the royal family has already taken considerable interest in cricket and had built a 30,000-seat cricket stadium in Abu Dhabi.
The ECB’s proposed Champions League is far more likely to be profitable if IPL teams participate. Discussions are on-going between the ECB and the BCCI. But the former could bypass the latter by sending invitations directly to any of the eight franchises in the IPL.
The BCCI-proposed Champions League is a non-starter. The Indian board demanded 50 per cent ownership of the league, a permanent Indian chairman, first call on all players, whatever their country, for the Indian franchises, and expanding the competition from eight teams (two each from India, England, Australia and South Africa) in the first year to 12, four of them Indian, in the third year.
The ECB subsequently tried to set up their own Champions League, to be staged in the Middle East, to accommodate the heightened expectations of the counties.
The only window in the international calendar is at the start of October and does not amount to a 10-day period because of Australia’s tour of India. But the ECB are keen to get a prototype league going to pre-empt India if their board would not join in now.