Cricket Blog

10 Bangladeshis want to sign up to the rebel ICL tournament. BCCI is not happy. Bangladesh Cricket Board bans these players for 10 years. What does ICC do? NOTHING. As expected. The ICC needs to make it clear that this is not tolerable. If every player decides to start playing in every other unofficial league, then there will be total chaos in the sport.

BCCI may be considered as a monolith, but atleast it is trying to keep things under control. Yes, there are arguments with that statement. Too much control is bad. But no control is even worse. ICC is no longer relevant these days as can be seen by the actions of teams who decided not to go to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, or the recent decision by the Sri Lankan Cricket Board that allows ICL players to play for their domestic teams.

So what should ICC do in this case? The most logical step is to ban ICL and any other non-official league. Send out a strong signal that any ICL related player will be banned from participating in any official match/tournament.

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Here are some live streaming sites to watch the second year of IPL, for free:

1. Twenty20World.blogspot.com
   • Link 1
   • Link 2
   • Link 3
2. ICCWorldcup-2011.blogspot.com
   • Link 1
3. Cricketdomain.blogspot.com
4. Sopcast Links - will be online about 10 minutes before start of play.
   • Link 1
   • Link 2
   • Link 3
5. Fudgetv - lots of indian channels on Sopcast
6. Zeesports
7. Bhejafry.net - free Zeesports

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Delhi Giants won by 6 wickets (with 10 balls remaining) Abbas Ali guides Giants to 6-wicket win. A good knock from Abbas Ali as he guided his team home. The Champs did well to pick up two early wickets but had no answer to Ali’s and Gunawardene’s on slaught as they put on 41 runs off 33 balls. Giants then lost two quick wickets but Pothas played intelligently to put on 61 runs for the fifth wicket to seal the victory.

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A new year of the rebel league starts. Here are the highlights for the opening match:

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Reports indicate that advertiser interest in the Zee-backed ICL has fizzled out drastically. ICL started a 10 second spot at Rs 40000, however, it seems that the price has come crashing down to only Rs 3000-4000 for a 10 second ad spot on Ten Sports-Zee Sports. This is a serious blow to the organisers who had hoped that the tournament filled with international stars would have been a sure-shot success.

In one my earlier posts, I had mentioned that with the India-Pakistan series clashing with the ICL tournament, things may get too hot for the rebel league. It was always going to be difficult to retain interest of the viewers but the way things stand at the moment, ICL will have to really do something special especially with the BCCI sponsored Indian Premier League starting next year. The problem for ICL has been the lack of big Indian stars. Yes, international stars have their own appeal, but to be realistic, this is an Indian tournament and if you don’t have enough Indian superstars then you are asking for trouble.

The only positive out of this ICl-IPL fiasco has been that the Indian board was forced to start a professional league that would not be based on States. Any player can play for any team. Let’s hope that the IPL can be a success and that would in turn translate to the current domestic season. If the way Indian cricket is run can be changed for the better, then the ICL would have played a big hand in it.

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