The Indian Cricket League has also taken off. Hyderabad Heroes, skippered by Chris Harris, are the Champions in the 8 team tournament. Here we give the logos of the 8 teams in the ICL.
A private League which runs parallel to the existing, official IPL of BCCI. Matches at the moment are in the 20/20 format. Matches are held in Chandigarh, Hyderabad & Gurgaon.
Zee Telefilms promoted by Subhash Chandra and part of the Essel Group, bid for the telecast rights of the 2003 World Cup. Despite being the highest bidder, Zee's bid was unsuccessful. In 2004, Subhash Chandra again bid for the rights and ended up in a court battle. He made another bid for the ICC World Champions Trophy and lost again.
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He responded by creating the Indian Cricket League. " Cricket content was denied to us; so we created, our own content" said H Mody of Zee. Zee announced that it had partnered IL&FS, an infrastructure major, to create a big Cricket Organisation, the Indian Cricket League, with a prize money of $ 1 million.
The ICL was set up with a corpus of $ 1 Billion, which will initially comprise 8 teams, with plans to expand to 16 teams and to eventually move to ODIs. These plans, if realised, will make ICL the richest professional League in India. On 24 July 2007, some international names were announced including Brian Lara, Chris Cairs, McMillan, Chris Read, Darryl Tuffy. Imran Farhat, Former Pak captain Javed Miandad said he could not understand why the Paksitan Board is not allowing its players to participate in the League. ICL got strong backing from a Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Kapil Dev, Tony Greig, Dean Jones and Kiran More has been hired as Board Members. They are paid positions.
India's unrealised potential
India losing the 2007 ODI World Cup made many fans disappointed. This had led to lower earnings to advertisers, broadcasters, travel and tour operators and cricket sponsors. The question " Why a nation of one billion people cannot find 11 players to become the World Champions" is on everybody's lips. This has been debated across news channels and in news papers. When India performs badly, ( India never won an ODI World Cup after 1983), irate fans go on throwing stones at players' houses ! One of the common answers is that the BCCI has failed miserably. Millions of fans, who hero worshipped their players, are finding BCCI, with its image marred by scandals, political influence and favoritism, an easy target to blame. Hero worship is dangerous and may be interfering with the player's mental focus !
Zee's Desire to create quality Sports Content
Zee acquired 50% in Ten Sports for 257 crores in Nov 2006. This gave Zee a few international cricket rights - West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Cricket in India is a 1000 crore industry, in advertising and subscription revenue. Zee has been acutely aware of losing out of this massive pie.
BCCI did not give Zee the telecast rights, saying that Zee has insufficient sports marketing experience. Zee's bids were the highest and imagine their chagrin, when they lost the rights !
BCCI refused to recognise ICL, and criticised Kapil Dev and Kiran More for joining ICL.
Fearing that they may lose young players, BCCI hiked up the wages for the players, hiking per match fees ( domestic ) to Rs 35000 from 16000. The minimum that a Ranji Trophy player makes is 14 lakhs per year now. Competition is painful, but it produces great results. We hope this competition between both Indian Leagues is healthy !
With the help of the Australian, South African and English Boards, BCCI set up its own League, the Indian Premier League, modelled after the National Football League and Major League Baseball in the US.
Support to the League
ICL received support from unexpected quarters. Mithum Chakravarthy owns the Kolkota Tigers and Lahore Badshahs are owned by a Pak actor. Indian Railways Minister, Lalu Yadav, opened all Cricket Stadiums owned by Railways to ICL. ICL has good backing in Pakistan. ICL Pakistan is a good team and Lahore Badshahs are all Pakistani.
Lalu Prasad Yadav said that both Leagues should cooperate and there should be matches between an IPL World XI and ICL World XI. Let their differences be sorted out on the Cricket field ! The West Bengal Government agreed to rent its Cricket Ground, the Eden Gardens, to both ICL and IPL !
Future of ICL
In a poll conducted, 69% said ICL will do better than IPL , while 16% said ICL will play a supporing role, while the rest said ICL will be a failure.
Matches started on 30 Nov 2007, with Chennai Superstars winning the Trophy.
In the World Championship, ICL India, skippered by R Satish, were the winners. They beat ICL World, captained by Chris Harris.
Telecast Rights are wholly owned by Zee. It is telecast on Zee Sports and Ten Sports
The Teams
Chandigarh Lions
Squad Chris Cairns (Captain), Sarabjeet Singh (wicketkeeper), Mathew
Elliot, Lou Vincent, Andrew Hall, Daryl Tuffey, Amit Uniyal, Bipul Sharma,
Chetan Sharma, Dinesh Mongia, Gaurav Gupta, Harpreet Singh, Ishan
Malhotra, Karanveer Singh, Love Ablish, Manish Sharma, Rajesh Sharma, T P
Singh
Coach: Balwinder Sandhu
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Jock Campbell
Physiotherapist: Tim Brennan
Massage Therapist: Sunni Hughes
Chennai Superstars
squad: Stuart Law (Captain), Ian Harvey, Russel Arnold, Shabbir Ahmed,
Adam Parore, Michael Bevan, G Vignesh, Hemang Badani, Hemant Kumar, J
Hariesh, P Vivek, R. Jesuraj, R. Sathish, Syed Mohammed, Tamil Kumaran,
Thiru Kumaran, V Devendran, Vasanth Saravanan
Coach: Michael Bevan
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Corey Bocking
Physiotherapist: Anthony Smith
Massage Therapist: Julia Russel
Delhi Giants
Squad: Marvan Atapattu (Captain), Avishka Gunawardene, Nic Pothas, Dale
Benkenstein, Shane Bond, Abbas Ali, Abhinav Bali, Abhishek Sharma, Abid
Nabi, Ali Murtaza, Dhruv Mahajan, Dishant Yagnik, J.P. Yadav, Mohnish
Mishra, Raghav Sachdev, Shalabh Srivastav, T Sudhindra, Ali Hameed Zaidi
Coach: Madan Lal
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Suhas Powar
Physiotherapist: John Pando
Massage Therapist: Grant Jacobs
Hyderabad Heroes
Squad: Chris Harris (Captain), Nicky Boje, Justin Kemp, Abdul Razzaq,
Jimmy Maher, Alfred Absolom, Ambati Rayudu, Anirudh Singh, Ibrahim
Khaleel, Indra Shekar Reddy, P.Kaushik Reddy, P.S Niranjan, Shashank Nag,
Stuart Binny, Syed Shahabuddin, Vinay Kumar, Zakaria Zuffri
Coach: Steve Rixon
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Michael Haddin
Physiotherapist: John Porter
Massage Therapist: Emma Vassallo
Kolkota Tigers
Squad: Craig Mc Millan (Captain), Lance Klusener, Upul Chandana, Nantie
Hayward, Andre Adams, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Abu Nechim, Deep Dasgupta,
Mihir Diwakar, Pritam Das, Rajiv Kumar, Rohan Gavaskar, Sayed Akhlakh
Ahmed, Shiv Sagar Singh,
Subhomoy Das, Sujay Tarafdar
Coach: Darryl Cullinan
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Shane Duff
Physiotherapist: Shyam Sunder
Massage Therapist: Heidi Hill
Mumbai Champs
Squad: Brian Lara (Captain), Nathan Astle, Johan Van der Wath, Tino Best,
Michael Kasper, Anupam Sanklecha, Avinash Yadav, Dheeraj Jadhav, Kiran
Powar, Nikhil Mandale, Pushkaraj Joshi, Ranjeet Khirid, Robbin Morris,
Shreyas Khanolkar, Shridhar Iyer, Subhojit Paul, Suyash Burkul, Raviraj
Patil
Coach: Sandeep Patil
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Paul Watson
Physiotherapist: Danny Redrup
Massage Therapist: Charlie Price
Lahore Badshahs
Squad: Inzamam ul Haq (Captain), Azhar Mahmood, Tofeeq Umer, Imran Farhat, Mushtaq Ahmed, Saqlain Mushtaq, Rana Naveed ul Hasan, Shahid Nazir, Hassan Reza, Naveed Latif, Hummayun Farhat, Imran Nazir, Mohammed Sami, Arshad Khan, Riaz Afridi
Coach: Moin Khan
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Jason Wheadon
Physiotherapist: Steven Partidge
Squad: Damien Martyn (Captain), Murray Goodwin, Heath Streak, Wavell Hinds, Jason Gillespie, Abhishek Tamrakar, Anshu Jain, Baburao Yadav, P. Bhima Rao, Parviz Aziz, Rakesh Patel, Pallav Vora, Reetinder Sodhi, Sachin Dholpure, Sanjeev Martin, Sriram Sridharan, Sumit Kalia
Coach: John Emburey
Strength & Conditioning Coach: Andrew Gray
Physiotherapist: Angela Cadogan
Massage Therapist: Carl Jacobs
ICL World
Chris Cairns (captain), Andrew Hall, Chris Harris, Damien Martyn, Daryl Tuffey, Ian Harvey, Jimmy Maher, Johan Van Der Wath, Lou Vincent (wicketkeeper), Marvan Atapattu, Mathew Elliot, Michael Kasprowicz, Russel Arnold and Upul Chandana
Coach: John Emburey
ICL Pakistan
Inzamam-ul-Haq (captain), Arshad Khan, Hasan Raza, Humayun Farhat (wicket-keeper), Imran Farhat, Imran Nazir, Shahid Nazir, Naved-ul-Hasan, Abdul Razzaq, Taufeeq Umar, Shabbir Ahmed
Coach: Moin Khan
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