A very English cricket blog by Patrick Kidd. Subscribe to a feed of this Times Online blog at http://timesonline.typepad.com/line_and_length/rss.xml
The draw for finals day of the Twenty20 Cup, which will be at the Rose Bowl on July 26, will be made this evening after the match between Warwickshire and Kent (and before we find out how the Yorkshire/Durham mess has been resolved). For the game's sake, we need the draw to throw together Essex and Middlesex in the semi-finals. This isn't out of any desire as a proud Essex supporter to be drawn against - and beat - our historic rivals early but because a final between Essex and Middlesex is exactly what the ECB wants to get it out of having to make a tough decision.
The two finalists in this year's Twenty20 Cup will qualify for the inaugural Champions League this autumn, with £2.5 million at stake, but the Indian cricket board, pushed by the Indian Premier League, has been demanding that no county with players who were involved in the unauthorised Indian Cricket League can be sent to represent England. As chance would have it, only Essex, Middlesex and Somerset lack players with ICL ties.
An Essex v Middlesex final would therefore allow the ECB to tell India that it would have been tough on ICL-linked counties if only any of them had qualified. It would mean that the ECB doesn't have to stand up for players' rights to free trade or for counties' rights to sign who they want. It would avoid a potentially ghastly diplomatic row.
Heck, if the final turns out to be Kent v Durham then the ECB may have to do one of its famous volte-faces about past England results in order to satisfy India. How about putting that Test England won in Bombay in 2006 down as a draw instead, so that India won the series 1-0? After all, it was hardly fair that we should pick Shaun Udal, a bowler whom India must have been unaware of, as our second spinner.
It's just ironic that Middlesex's progress towards the face-saving final with Essex could be dependent on how well Udal bowls in the semi.
Good evening from the Brit Oval where I am watching the Twenty20 Cup quarter-final between Middlesex and Lancashire. Technically, it is a home match for Middlesex because Lord's is out of action this week for the Test match against South Africa. Presumably when the calendar was drawn up during the winter, someone looked at Middlesex's hitherto woeful record in Twenty20 and assumed that they wouldn't need to be considered.
Despite the claims of Paul Sheldon, the Surrey chief executive, that "after exhaustive research" it has been found that this is the first time Middlesex have played a home game at the Oval, I understand that is not the case. In fact, Middlesex hosted Notts in a county championship game here in 1939 because Lord's was being used for the far more important Eton v Harrow clash.
At least this game hasn't been called off because of an ineligible player, as happened farcically last night. Quite how a professional club like Yorkshire can play someone who is a) not registered for them and b) doesn't have a British passport is baffling, but even worse is the way the ECB handled it, calling the game off last night eight minutes after the scheduled start time with the Riverside ground packed. If, as I understand, the ECB were aware of a possible rules breach the day before, they should not have dithered for so long. Perhaps they were waiting to see if the forecast rain would come, so that they wouldn't have to make a decision?
Anyway, it seems odd that someone can be ineligible to play for Yorkshire as an England-qualified player when they have captained England under-15, as Azeem Rafiq had done. Rafiq may have been born in Pakistan, but he was schooled in Barnsley and has played regularly for the Yorkshire Academy and Yorkshire seconds. He is probably as English as Andrew Strauss.
All this smacks of is poor paperwork. Yorkshire are guilty of not checking his full details but they should not be chucked out of the competition. After all, Rafiq's contribution in the one match he played in was two expensive overs in a low-scoring match and he didn't bat. If sense prevails, Yorkshire should be slapped with a fine and allowed to play their quarter-final. And as a gesture to the Durham fans, the ECB should give out free tickets (as well as refunding last night's match).
Incidentally, Rafiq may have captained England under-15 after being born in Pakistan, but Imad Wasim, the Pakistan under-19 captain this year, was born in Swansea!
You may have read about Graham Napier's assault on Sussex's bowlers at Chelmsford last night. The Essex all-rounder made 152 not out off 58 balls, with 16 sixes - a record number for a Twenty20 innings and the second highest score ever made in this form of the game.
For Napier it is a rare chance to make the headlines in a ten-year career that has never quite lived up to early promise. Napier was in the England side that won the 1998 Under-19 World Cup and like most of his team-mates has not kicked on as would have been hoped. Only Owais Shah and Graeme Swann have gone on to be regularly in the mix for the senior side and neither of them have quite cemented a place, while Rob Key, with 15 Tests, remains the most capped in five-day cricket of that team.
Napier went on an England A tour four years ago but that is as close as he has got to the big time. At 28 he still has years on his side and I wonder whether his big hundred yesterday will give him the impetus to become a top-flight one-day player.
It also raises the pertinent question of whether England should be selecting Twenty20 specialists instead of 50-over experts when they play the shortest form of the game. I know they tried it and it didn't quite work in the World Twenty20 last year so they have now decided to have the same one-day side for 50-over and 20-over games. But is that right?
If England want to select an XI made up of those who have proven themselves as masters of Twenty20 then it would include the likes of Murray Goodwin, Anthony McGrath, James Tredwell, Tim Murtagh and, even though he is in his forties, Graeme Hick. Perhaps the team who compete in the Stanford Twenty20 for half a million quid apiece should include some of these names rather than just being made up of the already well-earning England ODI side.
Now this is strange. A governing body has decided to stage a sporting event to attract as many fans as possible, rather than just to squeeze money out of them.
The ECB released details today of the ticketing for the World Twenty20 next June, which will run concurrently with the women's competition. Tickets will go on sale from 10am next Monday from the ICC website and the pricing seems quite reasonable.
The best seats at Lord's and the Oval will be £60 for a double-header pair of group games, £75 for a Super Eight and £90 for the semi-final and final, with Trent Bridge being a little cheaper, but there will be reduced prices in less attractive parts of the grounds and designated "family stands", where alcohol and lairiness are banned and tickets start at £30 for adults, £10 children (£20 and £8 for Trent Bridge).
All of which seems quite good, or at least better value than the £100 that the Oval is charging for the best seats for tomorrow's ODI against New Zealand. Women's matches are £6 for adults and one shiny pound coin for children.
You can read more about how to get tickets here.
The Twenty20 Cup gets under way shortly and I'm at Canterbury for Kent v Sussex. I'd forgotten how annoyingly - and unnecessarily - loud Twenty20 is... Having had my ears bashed by songs from Shania Twain and a popular beat combo that my colleague from The Daily Telegraph informs me is The Killers, we have now just had an opera singer crooning To Dream The Impossible Dream and Nessun Dorma on the outfield.
As he trilled the final vibrato, Ian Ward, waiting to begin Sky Sports's presentation, shook his head in frustration. Sky could have fitted in an extra advert during that one note.
As well as being noisy, Twenty20 lends itself more than sport usually does to banal PR. I received two press releases yesterday from a company representing Marston's, the official beer of English cricket (just so long as you don't want to bring your own into the ground). The first boasted of the new "Safe In Ground Beer Bottle". It's plastic, you see, not glass. So you can throw them safely at wandering opera singers. Groundbreaking. But I bet they still remove the caps before giving them to you, as they do at most grounds with bottles of Coke.
In the second press release, Marstons revealed a new advert in which WG Grace removes his cap to reveal a mohican. The scamp! The press release describes it thus: "The uncompromising father of English cricket, WG Grace, often made spectators' hair stand on end with his extraordinary cricketing skills during his unique 44-year career – but now Marston's has proved the iconic Victorian figure can still hit modern audiences for six."
We then get some guff about Grace's "unique passion and earnest commitment to the sport", which would make him ideally suited for Twenty20. Well, yes, but that's probably more to do with Grace's famed avarice, despite being an amateur, and lust for celebrity than his skills with bat or ball.
The press release ends with this useful footnote: "WG Grace got the nickname The Doctor because he was a doctor by profession." Funny that.
I was flying back from Lucerne last night, where Great Britain had rather modest return of one gold and three other medals in the second rowing World Cup, so I missed the final match in the IPL but understand it was a humdinger. The competition needed a great finale after dragging on a bit too long and like the World Twenty20 final that so grabbed the attention last September, this was a match that lived up to the occasion.
As my plane passed over the French Alps, Shane Warne (who else could it be?) stroked the final ball of Makhaya Ntini's last over through the covers for four to bring the target down to eight off the last six balls and Warne and Sohail Tanvir then pushed and nudged their way over the line with minimal alarm.
The only surprise is that it was not Warne who struck the winning runs, but Tanvir has been as big a part in Rajasthan's success as his captain and deserves his own moment of history. I don't know if there was any hoisting on shoulders going on afterwards (you'd probably need half a dozen fielders to hoist Warney) but Rajasthan deserve full praise, not least for winning the inaugural title on a (relative) shoestring.
Perhaps those IPL owners who are reportedly considering spending $2 million on Kevin Pietersen next year should consider that a little money on the right players goes a long way. Shower $150,000 each on Graeme Hick, Chris Schofield and Darren Stevens and you'll get a better return than $2m on KP.
Because I was reporting and travelling yesterday, I also failed to put up the regular first-of-the-month hero poll. That's coming soon.
It would probably have been a sensible investment to bet on an Australian being top run-scorer in the Indian Premier League, even if some of the bigger names left the tournament halfway through for their tour to the West Indies. but the identity of the Aussie who holds a 70-run lead at the top of the run-scoring table will have foxed most of us.
 Step forward Shaun Marsh, the Western Australia and Punjab Kings opening batsman who has nary a Test or one-day international cap to his name but gets to wear an orange cap in Saturday's semi-final for scoring more runs than anyone else. Yesterday, Marsh, son of Geoff, the former Australia opener, made 115 off 69 balls as Punjab beat Rajasthan Royals in their final group match and the two sides may well meet in Sunday's final.
The orange cap is a gimmick but a rather good one. It has passed from batsman to batsman as the tournament has progressed, like the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. The leading wicket-taker at each stage throughout the tournament gets a purple cap, too, and at the moment that is being worn by Sohail Tanvir, the Rajasthan left-armer, who has played only two Tests for Pakistan. Good to see the lesser-known players shining.
Marsh was a very shrewd buy by Punjab, no doubt aided by the advice of their coach, Tom Moody. He was the top run-scorer in Australia's domestic Twenty20 this year and will make his international debut soon after being named in their one-day tour party for the West Indies.
A first-class average of 35 suggests that it is a little early to be thinking of him as a Test match contender, but he averaged 60 in first-class cricket this winter and with the genes and batting skills that he has, it is not improbable. He has been batting first wicket down for Western Australia, behind the now-retired Justin Langer and Chris Rogers, but with Matty Hayden nearing the end of his career there will be a place at the top of the Australia order soon. In fact, come the end of next summer we may be as heartily sick of the Son of Swampy as we were of Geoff in the Ashes summer of 1989.
"Why bother writing about the IPL," one correspondent wrote to me recently, "when you are clearly bitter about its success." Well hopefully no one will detect any bitterness or sarcasm in today's post. As another reader commented, the IPL is just a domestic competition and as a result it should only be covered when something notable happens. Last night, something very notable happened. The IPL began to resemble a Test match rather than a bashathon.
There's no shock in one or even both sides making low scores in Twenty20. What did seem unusual in the game between Bangalore and Chennai is that both sides made under 130 in 20 overs and were not bowled out. Bangalore made 126 for eight in their 20, with Rahul Dravid making 47 off 39 balls (that in itself is something of a novelty in this tournament) and then their bowlers defended it, keeping Chennai to 112 for eight.
Anil Kumble and Jacques Kallis were the main ones to keep it tight, with their eight overs going for only 29 runs. The odd thing is that Chennai needed 62 to win off 55 balls with nine wickets in hand, which should have been the simplest of asks. Earlier in the day, Mumbai lost a thriller to Punjab by one run. No doubt this will just be taken as bitterness rather than the excitement of a cricket-lover, but was yesterday the day when the IPL finally sprung to life?
Slowly, the bowlers are gaining the upper hand in the Indian Premier League. Winning scores that in the first week or two were above 200 are now barely 150. Wonder how popular that is with the crowds? Sriram Veera has done a good job of analysing why.
Today the bowlers got their ultimate revenge as Kolkata Knight Riders, who you may recall began this tournament an awfully long time ago by bowling out Bangalore for 82 chasing 223, were skittled for 67 by Mumbai Indians. Not only was it 67 all out batting first but it was in just over 15 overs, a run-rate of 4.36 an over.
There were some immensely economical bowling figures in there, with Shaun Pollock taking three for 12 in four overs and Dominic Thornely two for seven in three. Mohammad Hafeez, with one for eight in four overs, has the tournament's best economy rate but Thornely and Pollock have respectively the best rates for two-fers and three-fers.
In the reply, Sachin Tendulkar was out for a three-ball duck but Sanath Jayasuriya ensured that the Mumbai side needed only 33 balls to chase the target
Here's an interesting story. The Americans are building a dedicated cricket ground in Florida, which will stage four Twenty20 tournaments this year, starting with one in a fortnight. Line and Length has quite a few American readers, many of whom show a heartening appetite for Test and first-class cricket, but Twenty20, of course, is about the only form of cricket that will be palatable to the larger mass of Americans. A dedicated venue could be the beginning of something big. Well, medium-sized. Well, better than nothing.
The stadium near Miami cost $47 million to build and is sited near a booming expat Caribbean community, where Lawrence Rowe, the great West Indies batsman, has lived for 25 years. Javed Miandad, Mohammad Azharuddin and Richie Richardson will lead all-star teams there this month but hopefully in time American clubs of a decent standard will evolve and aspire to play at this Lord's or Eden Gardens of the US.
Just one thing, though. Couldn't they come up with a more romantic name than the "Main Event Field" at Central Broward Regional Park?
 Can I just make it clear for the record that I have not been asked to play in the IPL? Just thought I'd mention it as everyone else seems to be desperate to tell the world that they have been approached and turned it down. It started with Ali Brown, then Mark Ramprakash and then in the past day and a half we have had Ravi Bopara, Saj Mahmood and Luke Wright, left, all issuing statements that they have been approached by the IPL and said no. I almost expect Tuffers or Gatt to tell us that they were also tapped up.
Excuse my cynicism, but this has a whiff of agents wanting to hyperpromote their clients so that they can negotiate better sponsorship deals. Being on the fringe of England selection isn't sexy enough, but being someone who turned down the IPL, well that could earn you a few extra thousand from some bat manufacturer or clothing company.
I have no doubt that the five above were all genuinely approached by the IPL (although the league would hardly issue a denial). I understand Lalit Modi had the names of a couple of dozen English players that he wanted to tempt - but you do have to wonder whether the IPL's interest went any farther than a modest inquiry. The way these denials have been spun, you'd have thought that they were all on the verge of taking strike in Bangalore before deciding not to.
Let's be serious here: for all the merits of Mahmood, Wright and Bopara, it is hard to see any Indian franchise paying more for them than the $100,000 that Rajasthan paid for Dimitri Mascarenhas, the only England player out there. Most of their budgets were blown in the first auction in February, at which point the English players weren't available, and with a limit on four overseas players per match, clubs aren't going to splash out on benchwarmers. Just ask Mascarenhas, who hasn't played a game yet.
So, in pounds that makes a possible earning this year of about £50,000. Then take away 10 per cent in agents' fees and 40 per cent in tax and you are left with barely £30,000, but that is pro rata and Mascarenhas, who is only out there for two weeks, won't receive even that. Still not bad money for very little work, but announcing that you had turned the IPL down could be worth more money in extra sponsorship than signing up. And it doesn't pee off the England selectors. Shrewd, very shrewd.
 Sir Richard Hadlee has criticised New Zealand Cricket for allowing the five players involved in the Indian Premier League to arrive late for their tour of England. Daniel Vettori, Brendon McCullum, Jacob Oram, Kyle Mills and Ross Taylor arrived in England last Wednesday, having missed the first two tour matches because they were cashing in their chips in India instead.
Speaking to promote Sky Sports' coverage of the Test series, which starts on May 15, Hadlee, the chairman of selectors, told me: "I made my thoughts well known to New Zealand Cricket. I felt that the tour starts the day the players assemble and while I understand and accept the decision made - the compromise with the players - it wasn't a good look arriving in this county without the captain and vice-captain."
Hadlee called for a window in the international schedule to allow the IPL to be played, or failing that he said that it must be made clear that international players have to be released for their full duties rather than arriving mid-tour. "International players have to be available for their countries," he said. "You can't blame the players for wanting to be in the IPL - gosh, look the money is very attractive for not a lot of work and effort - but the global game has to survive and not be compromised. There needs to be a total understanding that once international commitments are there either you are a part of it or not.
These guys will pick up the money next year as there isn't a conflict."
New Zealand have also lost several first-choice players who opted to play in the unauthorised Indian Cricket League. Shane Bond, Lou Vincent, Craig MacMillan and Daryl Tuffey may all have played on this tour and Hadlee complained that "the ICL is eroding our player base".
Another player missing for at least the first part of the tour is Jesse Ryder, the 23-year-old wild child who is quite a talent when he's not slashing open his hand trying to break into lavatories. "Jesse has had some issues that have probably kept him back but we've bitten the bullet on him," Hadlee said. "He's got talent and we thought when we brought him back that he would grow in the environment. He knows in no uncertain terms that if there is another breach of behaviour issues... well, you'd think he'd want to toe the line. He can play and has got lovely hands - well, one's damaged - but he can hit the ball well."
 Hilarious goings-on in India this weekend and (would you believe it?) Harbhajan Singh is again at the centre of a row. Apparently - and this is still under investigation - Harbhajan, the captain of the Mumbai Indians, took exception to being told "hard luck" by Sreesanth, his India team-mate who was playing for the victorious Punjab Kings XI in their IPL match, and Bhaji, model of sanity and decorum that he is, responded by slapping him one under an eye.
Sreesanth was later seen in tears. Although Harbhajan went to the dressing-room and apologised, he has been suspended pending an inquiry tomorrow and could face an ICC punishment even though this is a domestic tournament. Violence towards another player carries a possible ban of five Tests or ten ODIs.
This is hardly a first offence by Harbhajan, the obnoxious little weed, as Matthew Hayden called him, but there seems some irony in Sreesanth being the subject of his assault. The fast bowler is one of the most aggressive on the world stage, who is not above petulant staring, shoving or temper tantrums, which is a shame because he is also a fine bowler. If violence was to break out between two Indians, it would probably be those two: they have form after Harbhajan gave Sreesanth a volley of abuse for dropping a catch off him in the recent Test series.
Scyld Berry, the new Editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, has written of his fear that cricket is becoming more violent and that an assault will happen on the pitch at some point. How the BCCI, IPL and ICC respond to Harbhajan's latest action will say much about how they view it. Personally, I'd stick Harbhajan in a boxing ring with Sreesanth, Hayden and Andrew Symonds and let them sort out their grievances that way. I'm not sure that for all his big talk Harbhajan would last more than a couple of rounds.
 Chris Gayle has been ruled out of this year's Indian Premier League after failing to recover from a groin strain that he got playing for West Indies against Sri Lanka. This raises a question about how much money he has lost as a result of this injury on international duty. Gayle was "bought" for $800,000 by Kolkata, although as he was going to be released on May 18 for the West Indies then he would have received pro-rata "only" about $600,000. Now, of course, he will probably get even less.
However, I understand that even if a signed player doesn't compete at all, for whatever reason, they still get a guaranteed 25 per cent of their bid price. So Gayle has lost about $400,000 as a result of his injury. Or another way of looking at it, he gets $200,000 just for hobbling around the boundary rope. No wonder Kolkata have asked him to "spend some time with the team" (ie, be used for marketing purposes) in early May.
Recently, Giles Clarke, the chairman of the ECB, said that he was opposed to England contracted players being in the IPL in case they got injured in action and missed international matches. However, as Sean Morris, the new chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association, told me earlier today: "What about if an England player turned down a million-dollar contract with the IPL and then got a career-ending injury playing for England?" You can hardly blame some players for wanting to gather their rosebuds while they may.
[Apologies to those who prefer their blog posts to be nuggets rather than essays but I hope this stirs some debate]
An email came this morning from Homer, referring to William Rees-Mogg's agitated harrumphing about Twenty20 in this morning's Times. "While his objections to the premise of Twenty20 are laudable, I could not understand where the angst was when England launched Twenty20 five years ago," Homer writes. "I have yet to see an English writer who objects to the Pro Twenty competition between counties while having nothing but scorn for the IPL.
"If the objection is towards Twenty20, shouldn't the county Twenty20 league be the first to go? And if money is the object, how is no one saying anything about the obscene amounts Sir Allen Stanford is throwing towards the contests between his "All Stars" and the England team? Could you enlighten me as to why the English media is so intent on losing all credibility (before I start thinking race)?."
Fair points, Homer, and here's my take on the whole thing:
First, to deal with His Moggness's article, I don't think he is spurning the IPL specifically. It seems clear that Rees-Mogg dislikes all forms of Twenty20 and he doesn't mention India until halfway through. I don't know our former Editor, but imagine he was just as upset when the Twenty20 Cup was launched in England, it's just that the subject is at the top of the news agenda again right now because of the IPL.
Indeed, a year ago - before the IPL was even a daydream - Rees-Mogg wrote a piece in The Times criticising Twenty20 cricket, calling it "vulgar and meaningless". In 2001, two years before T20's birth, he wrote complaining about the meaninglessness of limited-overs cricket, a theme he also dallied on in 1997 and no doubt at various intervals going back into the dawn of time. There is nothing wrong with preferring your cricket in longer packages and I will defend Rees-Mogg on that. Like him, I prefer Tests to limited-overs.
Continue reading "My view of Twenty20" »
Throughout today's first Indian Premier League fixture between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders, I'll be blogging live. Let me know what you think by clicking "comments" below
CLOSE: So that's that, then. Something of an anticlimax to kick off this groundbreaking tournament, but I'd far rather that such a one-sided match was completed early than it drifted onwards with one side just too far behind the rate for the full 20 overs. Full marks to Brendon McCullum for becoming an instant star but his record innings killed the contest and in the end I found the ease with which he made his runs rather dull. As an occasional novelty, the IPL has a certain appeal but it is hard to see how six weeks of this will hold much attraction. The competition now needs some close matches to reignite the passions.
Right, that's it for me. I'm off to the Cooperage pub in Southwark, where they serve pints of Old Wallop in pewter tankards. Ah, the way things were. Do pop in if you are about. And as for Murder, She Wrote, I think it was Patrick Macnee who did it. Good night.
6.25pm: WICKET Some marvellous bowling figures from Kolkaka. Dinda has taken two for nine in three overs; Sharma one for seven off three. Praveen Kumar, on 18, is the only Bangalore batsman to reach double figures but he has run out of partners as Joshi holes out in the deep. How appropriate that the fielder underneath the catch was Brendon McCullum. Kolkata win by 140 runs, the fourth heaviest margin of victory in Twenty20 history.
6.16pm: Ricky Ponting doesn't want to hit the showers just yet. That can be the only reason why he just dropped what would have been the match-winning catch just now at mid-off. Sloppy and uncharacteristic error. And the required run-rate creeps up to four per ball. 77-9 off 14 overs.
6.15pm: WICKET Zaheer Khan slogs and misses at a ball from Ganguly, which clips his off stump. 70-9 now. Incidentally, Ganguly looks less balding than he has in a while. I wonder if Shane Warne, who said one of the reasons he was doing the IPL was to promote his hair-restoration company, has given him some free samples?
6.10pm: Praveen Kumar, who started this match, wallops a six down the ground, but it is only the second scored by his team. 70-8 off 13 overs now.
Continue reading "IPL Live" »
 Scoop of the day (1): Bryan Pietersen blags free football off his more famous cricketing brother. Asked at the launch of the new adidas-designed England kit if he had yet subscribed to Setanta so that he could watch the Indian Premier League on TV, Kevin Pietersen said: "Actually, my brother subscribed to it two weeks ago in my house, using my bank card, because he wanted to watch Chelsea playing football." To be fair, I'm assuming it was Bryan, who has played a bit of second XI cricket over here, who did the dirty; if it was his other brother, Tony, that would almost be a scandal as TP is a church minister.
Scoop of the day (2): Pietersen was modelling the new collarless red England Twenty20 kit, which looks a bit like the 2005 Lions rugby shirt and fits the body better than the old one and will hopefully mean he stops doing that irritating pick-at-the-sleeve thing while he's batting. But the player who caused the loudest gasps at Lord's today was Ryan Sidebottom, who strode out wearing the new Test kit. Not only are the cricket whites "brilliant white" for the first time - as opposed to grubby white or cream - but the new England sweater is not made of cable-knit wool, but instead some man-made fabric that leaches the sweat to the surface. "It's very, very white, a lot whiter than before," was Pietersen's view on the new kit, while he described the new wool-free sweater as "very interesting". A career in fashion journalism awaits.
Incidentally, your blogger hasn't subscribed to Setanta to watch the IPL, which starts tomorrow. I'm sure it will be exciting enough, but it clashes with Murder She Wrote.
How to fill the gap between one Twenty20 competition in India — the unofficial Indian Cricket League (ICL), which finished on Sunday — and the next — the Indian Premier League (IPL), which starts on April 18? Simple: have another one in between.
 Today, the ICL World Series begins, a triangular tournament between the pick of the players from the eight ICL franchises. One team will represent India, one will play for Pakistan and the third will be made up of the rest and be coached by an Englishman, John Emburey, left. The hastily-arranged World Series has caught some of the players on the hoof. "It means staying around for another week and lots of the players had made arrangements to leave by now," Emburey said, "but there is a demand for it."
Emburey coached the Ahemdabad Rockets in the second ICL series. Despite winning their opening game, they finished last, which he blames on his international players underperforming. Murray Goodwin scored 43 runs in seven innings, Damien Martyn 83, Wavell Hinds averaged 21, while Heath Streak's bowling was expensive, yet Emburey says his less heralded young Indian players rose to the occasion.
"The lack of practice facilities has been the big problem," Emburey added. "The BCCI have made it very difficult for us to play at anything other than municipal grounds and the practice facilities have been shared between the teams, but hopefully this will improve."
The ICL staged its first Twenty20 tournament before Christmas, taking some of the wind out of the IPL, which is backed by the Indian board. Emburey said that crowds for the matches, played at only three grounds, have been "mixed but excellent at the games in Hyderabad with up to 20,000 watching". The former England off spinner added that the TV viewing figures for the ICL, helped by the partnership between Zee and Ten Sports, have been impressive. "There have been more people watching the ICL on TV than were watching the India v South Africa Test series," he said.
 Hyderabad Heroes won the ICL final series 2-0, beating the Lahore Badshahs by six runs on Friday and then winning the second final on a bowl-out on Sunday after both sides made 130 in 20 overs. Emburey said that the unofficial tournament was proving to be most popular with Pakistani fans, perhaps because of its stance against the Indian board and because the Badshahs, captained by Inzamam-ul-Haq, were made up solely of Pakistan internationals. "Most of the biggest crowds have been for Lahore and there have been as many Pakistani flags in the crowd as Indians," he said. With India making stacks of money from Twenty20, the ICL, it appears, has been Pakistan's way of restoring national pride.
They will have another chance to cheer on their heroes in the week-long World Series, in which the three sides play each other twice before a final on April 15. Chris Cairns will captain Emburey's Rest of the World XI and he has assembled a strong-looking side including Shane Bond, Ian Harvey, Marvan Atapattu and Lou Vincent. "All we need is a good spinner for the crucial middle overs," he said. "If only I was a bit younger."
 The Indian Cricket League, the unofficial one of the two Twenty20 tournaments in India, has not really crossed my radar in the past few weeks but I started to follow the semi-finals and three-match final series on Cricinfo at the end of last week and was again reminded how, in terms of excitement and unpredictability, Twenty20 is a superior game to 50-over cricket, which can too often drift aimlessly towards a conclusion that everyone foresaw an hour or more earlier.
Two examples of the twists and turns in Twenty20: in the first final on Friday, the all-Pakistani Lahore franchise, who had not lost a game to that point, looked out of it with five overs to go when they needed 57 runs. Things didn't improve when the 17th over yielded only five runs, but with some extravagant hitting they got it down to a target of seven runs off four balls, only for Abdul Razzaq, ironically another Pakistani, to take three wickets in four balls and seal the win for Hyderabad.
Then in the second final yesterday, Lahore looked in big trouble after making only 130. Hyderabad needed 67 to win in nine overs with plenty of wickets in hand, but then Rana Naved-ul-Hasan took three wickets in his penultimate over, the 18th, to make things interesting. As the last over started, Hyderabad needed 11 to win, so it was not the best time for Naved to start bowling front-foot no-balls, which allow a free hit as well as an extra. He sent down two of them, and a wide, but also got two wickets in the over so the match finished with Hyderabad also on 130.
"Great, a tie," I thought, "and they can go on to the third final with the series still alive." I assumed that if Lahore won today's third final then they would share the title. But no. We can't have such a thing as an honourable draw in Twenty20; the crowds, sponsors and money men demand a winner. So there was the stale dessert of a bowl-out, a test of luck rather than skill, to decide who should win. Hyderabad hit the stumps three times, Lahore didn't, so Hyderabad took the title 2-0.
It seems that as well as being condensed into less than three hours to replicate baseball, Twenty20 also borrows the "there must always be a winner" concept from the American sport. In baseball, actually, I find it all the more baffling that matches can't end in a tie, given how many league games they play. It fails to recognise some last-ditch act of heroism, whether it is great fielding that keeps the score down or an awesome hit to level the match. Extra innings or a bowl-out just reduce the importance of the match.
I've been in a bowl-out myself (well, I was twelfth man). It was in the Mobil Matchplay, a tournament for under-15s sides, and my club, Camul, had reached the final at Chelmsford, Essex's county ground. The match was rain-affected and a full game couldn't be staged so it was settled on a bowl-out, with my side losing. Fair enough, for a one-off final perhaps that was the best way to settle it (although I still think the title should have been shared). But when you have three finals, there should be scope for allowing a draw.
Remember the final of the NatWest Series at Lord's in 2005? England were chasing Australia's paltry 196 to win but at 33-5 things didn't look good for us. Then Paul Collingwood and Geraint Jones put on 116 together, the tail added some runs and England finished on 196-9. Some might say that we should have been given the silverware on the basis of losing fewer wickets, but instead it was decided that the match and the trophy should be shared. It was an appropriate end for a gripping match - a rare one in 50-over cricket. A bowl-out would have taken away something from both the winners and the losers.
So come on Twenty20, embrace the no-result. Sometimes winning isn't everything.
I wish I had been born in the 1950s rather than the mid-1970s then I might have been able to draw some parallels between the Kerry Packer Circus and the funfair that is the Indian Premier League. (Actually, I think my ideal time to have been born would have been 100 years ago, so I'd have had all the fun of being an adult in the 1930s and 1940s - the Blitz, Vera Lynn, the golden age of jazz, Bradman, wanton wartime shagging - with a relatively low chance of being sent into active combat, especially considering my eyesight).
Anyway. Among the things to have come out about the IPL this weekend was the news that Lord's and the Oval, and possibly other grounds, might stage exhibition matches for the IPL teams. This was reported by the world's media after an article in The Times yesterday, although to be fair the first whispers came two days earlier in a piece written in the Birmingham Post by George Dobell (I'll have a pint of Guinness, George).
It strikes me as odd that the ECB can bleat about the involvement of players from the rebel Indian Cricket League in county cricket, saying that they fear the endorsement of a competition that could threaten their monopoly here, and yet invite in the IPL to directly promote another country's tournament rather than our own Twenty20 Cup. Actually, it's not odd, just a sign of how desperate the ECB is to kiss up to the BCCI.
Why not make our Twenty20 competition better than the IPL's, rather than allow the IPL to make money over here? The Domestic Structure Review Group is considering its options and the results will be revealed in a couple of weeks. There have been calls for them to be radical, perhaps even to go for city-based franchises rather than the old counties, but if we brush aside the stardust of the "new" IPL, what is actually being planned in India that is so innovative?
It is the same basic competition as the Twenty20 Cup. There will still be three stumps, two batsmen at any one time and a small round ball. Many of the games will be under floodlights. There will be music and razzmatazz. Any other fripperies are irrelevant. The only difference is that the world's best players are competing in India and being paid stacks of money for it. Perhaps all the ECB needs to do is to remove the restrictions on overseas players over here and allow counties to strike business partnerships with the money men to sign the biggest names.
However, I have my own radical masterplan: first, instead of 20 overs a side, why not have an unlimited number (more is always better, right?); then, instead of having the match over and done with inside three hours, expand it to four or possibly five days; finally, and this is a good one, let each side have two chances to bat. It sounds revolutionary, but it might just work. I'd be happy with it, anyway.
 There was a fascinating interview during the luncheon break of last night's Test match when David Gower grilled Giles Clarke, the chairman of the ECB. Normally an interview from Gower is, to quote Denis Healey on Geoffrey Howe's interrogation skills, "like being savaged by a dead sheep", but Gower actually laid into Clarke over the ECB's wrangling with the Indian Cricket League (you all know the story, but click here and here for a refresher). It was all the more impressively unsubservient given that Gower owes his salary to Clarke, as the man who negotiated the sale of England TV rights to Sky.
It wasn't quite Paxmanesque, but Gower's probing, to my eye, had Clarke flapping and angry. At least Clarke admitted that the main reason for banning ICL players from the English domestic competition was out of fear that a rebel competition could be set up in this country, but he still did not explain why he feared such competition. For a man who made his millions selling wine, turning Majestic into a big force by innovative pricing and selling techniques, I am surprised that he does not relish using the dominant position of the ECB to crush any upstarts by the quality of his product rather than by threats and bans.
Despite my gibes, I think the ECB generally does a good job. They run some attractive competitions, they develop the grassroots well and, as Clarke pointed out, have overseen a 900 per cent growth in the numbers of women and girls playing cricket over the past ten years, which has led to England women becoming the best in the world. The men are some way off being that, but generally the game in England is in good health thanks to the ECB.
I just don't understand why they feel that a putative rival Twenty20 competition (which would not be able to use the leading cricket grounds in this country as a base) would be such a threat. Surely anything that introduces more people, especially children, to cricket is a good thing. When their attention is grasped, the ECB will be there to offer a more attractive form of the game to them.
For those who just want a Twenty20 fix, the ECB is taking steps to improve the attractiveness of their own product (it's a shame that, having invented the shorter game, they had to be prodded into this by the Indians), with more night games and more overseas players mooted. With that going on, I find it hard to understand how a rebel league from a low starting point could flourish.
Well no one can accuse the ECB of being lily-livered and failing to carry out their threats (not today, anyway). A terse email has come out this afternoon from Colin Gibson, the former journalist turned head of press at the ECB, saying that five players involved in the "rebel" Indian Cricket League have applied for registration to play for their counties this summer and the ECB has stamped a big black "rejected" sign over the applications and put them in the bin.
 The bad boys are Wavell Hinds (Derbyshire, left), Johan van der Wath and Andrew Hall (Northants), Justin Kemp (Kent) and Hamish Marshall (Gloucs). Well, they can't say they weren't warned. At least the ECB did us the courtesy of putting out the news at a decent hour, rather than 10.30pm on a Friday, like they did the last time.
I've made my opinion on this clear before and there is no point going over old ground. It is the ECB's prerogative to say who can and cannot play in their competitions, but the players surely have the right to free trade when they are out of contract. There is a slight complication here as the ECB can claim that they are acting under a rule that bans players from competing as Kolpak signings (ie, not being part of an overseas quota) if they have played for their country in the past 12 months, but as we saw last season with Jacques Rudolph, who merely said that he had no intention ever to play for South Africa again when signing for Yorkshire as a Kolpak, there is a precedent for the rule being waived.
It seems ironic that the Indian Premier League, which clashes with the start of the county season and is keeping several leading players away from the paying public until June, is regarded as not being harmful for English cricket, while the ICL, which happens on the players' own time in the off-season, is bad. Obviously it has everything to do with the financial power of the Indian cricket board, which is backing the IPL and has such little faith in the quality of their own product that they fear competition.
It is illuminating to draw a comparison with the Stanford Twenty20, which was set up by an American businessman in 2005 as a direct challenger to the West Indies Cricket Board and its tired approach to running the game in the Caribbean. No one got uppity about this rebel tournament. No West Indians who competed in it were banned from playing for their national side or for other competitions, although the principle of it being "unofficial" was surely the same. In time, the Stanford enterprise was seen as a good thing, re-energising appetites for the game in the West Indies. Late last year, the WICB struck a deal with Stanford to incorporate the competition into the domestic calendar. If the ICL likewise proves a success, why shouldn't it be welcomed? And if it is not a success, let it wither. Just play fair, BCCI.
One of the many rules I learnt during a former career in Westminster - and have since seen reinforced in journalism - is that if you want to bury a bad policy, there is little better way than sticking out a press release at 10.30pm on a Friday. Far too late for the Saturday press to do much with it and chances are the Sundays will ignore it in the morning rush. So it was with scepticism and gloom that I read the following sent out by the ECB barely an hour ago, which I print in its entirety and rebut underneath.
"The ECB today announces that it is taking immediate steps to deal with the threat posed by events which are not authorised by the ICC and its members (“unauthorised events”). The ECB believes that the steps are necessary for the protection of the organisation and administration of the game in England and Wales, primarily for the reasons communicated by the ECB to the Chief Executives of the Counties, the MCC and the PCA on 1 November 2007.
"The steps are as follows: The Regulations Governing the Qualification and Registration of Cricketers (“the Regulations”) will be amended with immediate effect to provide, amongst other things, that a cricketer who has played in an unauthorised event in the 12 months leading up to 1 April in any given year will not qualify for registration. Although the ECB has discretion to waive non-compliance with its registration requirements, the policy of the ECB from now on will be to decline to exercise its discretion in favour of cricketers who have played in unauthorised events, save in the most exceptional circumstances.
"In addition, the Regulations will now provide that, once registered with the ECB, a cricketer will be disqualified if he plays in an unauthorised event. The ECB will not exercise its discretion in his favour, save in the most exceptional circumstances. In respect of cricketers who are already registered with the ECB, and who have already contracted with an unauthorised event, the ECB has been advised that no action should be taken against them. The ECB understands that this affects only a handful of cricketers. However, in respect of future contracts which any cricketer enters into with unauthorised events, the amended Regulations will apply.
"In relation to an overseas cricketer (termed an “Unqualified Cricketer” under the Regulations), there has long been a requirement that a County wishing to register such a cricketer obtain a “No Objection Certificate” from the Governing Body of the country for which such cricketer is qualified to play Test cricket. This is consistent with ICC policy. Without an NOC a cricketer is not entitled to registration under the Regulations. The ECB will not exercise its discretion in favour of a cricketer who has contracted with an unauthorised event, save in the most exceptional circumstances.
"The ECB has taken legal advice from Leading and Junior Counsel and Slaughter and May in respect of the above steps. The ECB is satisfied that its response is lawful, robust and proportionate in the face of the challenges presented by unauthorised events."
All clear? The response of the players' unions will be interesting as this appears to be a restraint of trade for any cricketers who play in a non ICC-sanctioned event. Whatever the ECB's legal advice, there are plenty of employment lawyers out there who think this could be thrown out by the courts should any player challenge it. The TCCB and ICC tried to do this in the 1970s over Kerry Packer and lost. The World Series players were still allowed to play in county cricket. Likewise, the apartheid rebels were not banned from playing in England (and indeed were allowed to play for England after a suitable guilt period).
This, we suspect, is all to do with the Indian Cricket League, which by coincidence starts a second tournament in barely 24 hours. The ECB hopes that this late act of defiance may make certain players think twice before playing unless they already have a no-objection certificate from their national board. However, what it really shows is the cowardice and weakness of the ECB, desperate not to get on the wrong side of the BCCI, the biggest force in world cricket. The BCCI controls the "official" Indian Premier League and does not relish the competition. Understandable because of the money tied up in the IPL, but it doesn't say much for their faith that the quality of the IPL's cricket will be more attractive to the public.
Nor does it say much for the ECB's faith that their own product - the county championship, Twenty20 Cup and so on - can win over paying punters in this country. There has been a lot of rubbish from the ECB about how this tough stance is for the good of the game because the ICL does not invest its money into the grass roots and because it does not follow the ICC anti-doping and anti-corruption policies. Ignoring the number of match-fixing scandals to have happened on the ICC's watch, the reason why the ICL has no policy is because the ICC has shown no interest in working with it to implement one. As for investing in the grass roots, if the ICL offered to channel part of its funds into the school or state system would it be allowed to by the body that already controls the funding?
The real reason, I suspect, that the ECB is so opposed to the ICL is because it fears it could expand and set up a competition in this country during our domestic season. Let's face it, if some international or England players choose to play a tournament in India during the English off-season it will have no impact on the game over here, no more than if they played state cricket in Australia or got a job selling Christmas trees. The threat comes if the ICL creates a direct competition to the ECB's products. If it did, I have every confidence that the events the ECB stages would be more attractive in the long run than some meaningless hit and giggle diversion. Clearly the ECB has less faith in what it promotes - and is not prepared to introduce the changes (such as allowing counties to sign more overseas players in the Twenty20 Cup, as advocated by Rod Bransgrove, the Hampshire chairman) that would make its product more impressive.
The ECB also seems keen on creating a top level of a very few super-rich cricketers, which does not suggest that it cares about the majority of English players. Do the maths: with eight teams in the IPL and only a maximum of eight foreign players allowed per team, the chances are that no more than a dozen English players will be involved. That means that other just as talented players will be denied the right to earn a boost to their incomes by other means. It will create a gulf between the haves and have nots.
Personally, I care not a fig about either the IPL or the ICL. Both are frivolities that matter little to me. I would like to see them allowed to fight each other into a financial stalemate, but then I have faith that watching Essex v Middlesex at Lord's is a more enjoyable way to pass the time than some padded version of the Harlem Globetrotters. Clearly the ECB does not think so.
 I heartily recommend reading Osman Samiuddin's article for Cricinfo on the Indian Premier League and its campaign (backed by the BCCI) to drive the "rebel" Indian Cricket League out of business. It gives a good account of the growing row between the official and unofficial Twenty20 competitions in India.
Now, before I go further, I stress that I'm not banging a drum for either side. While rebels are often cast in the role of the good guys against the authoritarian status quo baddies, I'm sceptical about the need for two separate Twenty20 competitions in India and if the ICL (or IPL for that matter) is seen by the paying public as superfluous to demand then I will not weep if it goes under. But as someone who believes that the free market is preferable, especially in sport, to state or national body controls, I want the ICL to have a fair crack at taking on the IPL.
I also don't see how either will hold much more than academic fascination - and even then only for the first year - to cricket fans outside India. OK, so we have a mawkish interest in how much was bid for who, but I can't see myself tuning in to watch Brett Lee bowl to Rahul Dravid (outside of Australia v India), let alone caring who wins between Mohali and Bangalore. This story is more about business and politics than cricket.
I am bothered that the IPL, BCCI, ICC and the other national boards, fearing that the ICL or something similar could spread around the globe and provide unwanted competition for their fiefdoms, are trying to use their position of strength to bully those associated with the ICL. It smacks of a lack of confidence in the strenth of their product (understandably given the huge sums spent on it). Osman says that organisations in Pakistan that employ ICL-contracted players for promotional work, such as banks, have been told to sever the ties. Daryll Cullinan and Moin Khan have been banned from their broadcasting work because of their involvement with ICL. There is a fear that media outlets who cover the ICL will be banned from reporting on "official" events. This is all quite despicable and possibly illegal.
 In this country, the first-class counties have been told by the ECB that they cannot sign an overseas player who has played for the ICL, even if they are long retired from international cricket (such as Mushtaq Ahmed at Sussex), unless they have a no-objection certificate from their home board. Pakistan and New Zealand, with possibly others to follow, have said that they will not give their ICL rebels permission to ply their trade elsewhere. This strikes me as sheer pettiness. Employment lawyers have told me that it may not be legally enforceable.
There is a precedent. In 1978, the ICC and TCCB (forerunner of the ECB) changed their rules so that any player who took part in the unapproved Kerry Packer World Series would be ineligible to play in any ICC/TCCB sanctioned match (including county cricket). The court found against the ICC and TCCB. So, it appears that the no-objection certificate requirement may also constitute a restraint of trade, unless it can be justified.
Now, sports governing bodies are of course free to decide what is in the best interests of their sport - the ECB, for instance, is free to put a limit on the number of overseas players a county can employ, and this is legally defensible because it has an impact on the opportunities of young English talent - but they cannot use their dominant position to trample on competition willy-nilly. The ECB claims (following an ICC formula) that the ICL must be stopped because a) it doesn't pass any of the money it raises to the grass roots of the game and b) because the ICL isn't signed up to the ICC's anti-doping and anti-corruption measures. But this is a blatant smokescreen. They are simply afraid of an ICL expansion project setting itself up in England and taking on their product. This is understandable, but attacking the players is the wrong way to go about it. They must be allowed to earn a living - after all, without them there would be no ECB in the first place.
Instead, I offer this solution: should the ICL try to create a franchise or two in England, the ECB would be free to forbid it from holding matches at any of their funded grounds. That would mean any county ground, outground, school ground or whatever that receives ECB funding would be told not to stage any ICL matches on pain of having their funding removed. We may still get matches on drop-in wickets held at Wembley, Twickenham or in Hyde Park - as there were on Aussie Rules grounds during World Series 30 years ago - but I suspect they would be seen as just gimmicks and would not have the stable base from which to attack the ECB's competitions. Be brave, ECB. You may just find that people in this country quite like what they already have.
Then again, are the ECB and the counties just greedy for more money because of the IPL's masterstroke of introducing a Champions League for foreign teams to compete in against the IPL champion? If so, they may want to consider this: under the contracts the international players have signed with the IPL is a clause that states that they must place their IPL team above their home club. So, if Shane Warne's Jaipur side and his Hampshire side both qualify for the Champions League, he will have to play for Jaipur in it instead of his English county.
We ought not to forget in the rush of big names being signed to IPL teams that only four foreign players can play in each match. Obviously, building a roster is important and not all foreign players will be available for the whole tournament, but there will be some famous names with big price tickets who will be acting as expensive cheerleaders if everyone is available. Here's who could be left warming the bench, taking the likeliest starters from the foreign consignments for each team.
 Hyderabad: Starters: Gilchrist, Symonds, Vaas, Afridi. Benchwarmers: Gibbs, Styris, Zoysa (minimum cost of unused players: $860,000 - which will increase substantially when/if Symonds goes on Australia duty)
Chennai: Starters: Hayden, Muralitharan, Oram, Morkel. Benchwarmers: Fleming, Ntini, M Hussey (cost: $900,000, plus Hayden and Oram will miss the latter stages)
Mohali: Starters: Jayawardena, Sangakkara, Lee, Katich. Benchwarmer: Sarwan (cost: $225,000, Lee and Sarwan will miss the end of the tournament)
Kolkata: Starters: McCullum, Gul, Gayle, Ponting. Benchwarmers: D Hussey, Shoaib Akhtar, Taibu (cost: $1.225 million, with McCullum, Gayle and Ponting to miss the end)
Mumbai: Starters: Pollock, Malinga, Fernando, Bosman. No benchwarmers.
 Bangalore: Starters: Kallis, Boucher, Steyn, Bracken. Benchwarmers: White, Chanderpaul (cost: $700,000, plus Bracken in late May)
Delhi: Starters: Vettori, Shoaib Malik, De Villiers, McGrath. Benchwarmers: Asif, Dilshan, Maharoof (cost: $1.125 million, one of the three will replace Vettori when NZ tour England)
Jaipur: Starters: Warne, Smith, Akmal. Benchwarmer: Langer won't be playing IPL this year. (cost: $200,000)
All the bitterness is coming out now in the aftermath of the IPL auction. Ricky Ponting was rather depressed that he fetched only $400,000 for his services and that Andrew Symonds has come out of the whole monkeygate furore with a cool $1.35 million. "I thought I might have been able to attract a little bit more than that," Ponting said. "The fact I haven't made a lot of runs over the last couple of weeks probably hasn't helped much. But realistically we as Australian players probably won't be able to take part in the first couple of years of the event anyway."
Not unless you do what Symonds has done and put the money ahead of going to Pakistan. Ponting went on: "I've already sent Symmo a few messages saying that any time I go out with him from now on it's his shout, which is not always the case with Symmo either, he's pretty much the first one to dodge a shout whenever he can."
Ouch. If I were Symonds, I'd make sure I buy champagne for the whole dressing-room and then refuse to give Ponting a glass.
The auction of almost 80 of the world's best players is well under way in Bombay as I type and astounding sums of money are being bid for the best Twenty20 players. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has gone for $1.5 million; Sanath Jayasuriya for $975,000; Sachin Tendulkar for more than a million (on the grounds that as an icon player he will be paid 15 per cent more than Jayasuriya); Andrew Symonds for $1.35 million. Astounding prices given the salary cap of $5 million that each team is allowed to spend. Some pretty big names are going to be disappointed with how little they will be paid. Either that or (am I just being a cynic here?) the IPL will view the salary cap as just a starting point.
Meanwhile, no one loves (or can afford) Glenn McGrath and Mohammad Yousuf, who have gone back into a second pool after failing to meet their reserve price. I suspect I'm not the only one who finds it amusing that Shane Warne, after all his self-publicity, will earn only $450,000, but he'll probably make double that in selling hair.
I tracked down the Welshman who is handling the auction yesterday and you can read his view of how it was due to go by clicking here.
In his column in The Times this morning, Shane Warne brought further bad news to those Hampshire fans already miffed that he is putting poker and the Indian Premier League ahead of taking on Lancashire or Sussex. "I would like to be able to take Advanced Hair Studios into India and this may be a way in," Warne writes. Fair enough, he has to think about life after retiring and if he wants to make his money from flogging hair then good luck to him.
 But it raised a query in my mind about balding Indian cricketers. See, for some reason I can't equate Indian cricketers with baldness. Sri Lankans, yes, thanks to Jayasuriya and Atapattu, but top-level Indian cricketers have always seemed to have plenty of hair. Of the present crop, if you excuse the word, there are some majestically flowing locks on the heads of Ishant Sharma, RP Singh and Sreesanth and the rest seem reasonably well-covered. If Ganguly and Tendulkar wear their hair short, it still doesn't suggest the need to go for the treatment that Warne promotes.
 But then I came across these pictures of Vinod Kambli (top) and Virender Sehwag, who normally hides his head under a cap or, when batting, a headscarf. Might they be the first customers for Dr Warne's miracle grow treatment?
 I shouldn't let these things annoy me, but one quote leapt out in this press release from the ECB about Lord's being recommended to host the final of the 2009 World Twenty20. It's from Steve Elworthy, the former South Africa bowler and tournament director for World Twenty20, who says that last year's final "made broadcasting history in India with 1.4bn tuning in for the final".
I know that the ECB has to drum up interest from advertisers and so it is understandable that they should inflate the viewing figures to ensure maximum revenues, but that figure simply is not credible. Not remotely. For a start, the population estimate for the entirety of India last July was just over 1.1bn. Even allowing for a quarter of them inviting their Pakistani friends round to watch the final, that would mean the entire country watched it.
Now Indians are immense cricket lovers, but I suspect that the final was watched by maybe a fifth of that at best. I can't find figures for TV ownership in India, but the number of mobile phones owned, according to the same data source as the population figures, is 166 million and the number of internet users in India is 60 million. I find it hard to believe that there are many more TV owners, but even allowing for people watching the game in bars, it is surely more reasonable to assume the TV audience for the World Twenty20 was 250 million tops. Which is still quite impressive.
But maybe Elworthy meant global TV audience? If so, he is still way out. Fifa estimates that one billion people worldwide watched the 2006 World Cup football final - and that figure has been discredited. Fifa's TV figures are compiled, would you believe, by the same company that negotiates TV rights. Their chief executive is Philippe Blatter, nephew of Sepp, the man who runs world football. It is suspected that the true worldwide viewing figure for the football World Cup final was between 260 and 400 million.
So Elworthy is saying that the World Twenty20 was more than three times popular than the football World Cup? Hmmm... I know I'm being a pedant, but there is a difference between overstating and being a (you guessed it) pillock.
Against my better instincts, I turned on the Twenty20 international just now and was immediately assaulted by a hideous display of Australian crass ignorance that really offended me. No, not a mid-over mic conversation between Roy and Slats, but an advert for some new Australian TV series called Underbelly, which had the caption "coming soon on Wednesday's". Yuck. Thought it was only the English who let their apostrophes loose in that way.
Australia are on top at the moment, with half the India wickets down in the first seven overs. Sehwag left thanks to one helluva piece of fielding by Michael Clarke, a dive down, bounce up and throw the wicket down from gully sort of thing. Great stuff. But this isn't proper cricket, is it? By the way, why is Brett Lee called Binga?
Brian Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Ricky Ronting ... Paul Nixon. Leicestershire's gobby wicketkeeper is the latest star foreign player to sign up for the new Indian Premier Cricket League and he will be a good addition. Nixon's tale over the past year has been a great fairytale: seemingly near the end of his career he was called up by England at the age of 36 to play in Australia, went to the World Cup and now finds himself getting huge pay offers from India. (Note: thanks to the reader who pointed out that Nixon is heading for the unofficial Cricket League rather than the official Premier League that Ponting is joining)
He's still a pillock, though. "India is the Mecca of cricket," he said on signing his contract. Lord's, surely, is the Mecca of cricket in that it is the world-recognised birthplace of the game (well, technially Hambledon is recognised as that but you know what I mean). India, if we must use an Islamic metaphor, is maybe the Constantinople of cricket, where the game spread and caught on like wildfire. Or perhaps the Leicester of cricket? Doesn't have the same ring.
I'm not sure why Nixon gets such chances late in life on the basis of little more than a big mouth, while Mark Ramprakash can't get a look-in at a similar age after twice scoring 2,000 county runs and averaging 100 in a season.
Perhaps this is why: in the latest extracts of his autobiography, Why Does Everyone Hate Me Behind The Shades, Duncan Fletcher says that Chris Read didn't get more of a chance in Australia last winter because he didn't start sledging Shane Warne when the spinner was having a pop at Pau |
