The ICC on Thursday allayed fears that the proposed Twenty20 series by the Indian Cricket League would take some gloss of the inaugural world championships to be staged here in September.
ICC cricket manager Dave Richardson dismissed the ICL tournament as a minor event. “It’s a local thing, it’s not a threat,” Richardson said at the launch of the Twenty20 world championships.
“It doesn’t conflict with what we are trying to do in South Africa. It is not an international tournament,” he added. The ICL, a brain child of Indian entertainment house Essel Group, has roped in Brian Lara and has approached New Zealand’s Stephen Fleming and Australians Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath.
Dangling a winner’s purse of USD 1 million, the proposed league would feature six teams — each having four international players in the ranks — which would play Twenty20 matches across India.
ICL has roped in Indian’s lone World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev as Chairman of its Executive Board, where he is joined by Tony Greig, Australian cricketer-turned-commentator Dean Jones and former India stumper Kiran More.
Claims denied
Meanwhile, Australian Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath’s managers have denied that the two cricketers are close to joining the Indian Cricket League, adds PTI from Melbourne.
Warne’s manager, James Erksine, said Kapil Dev’s claims that the Aussie was likely to join the ICL were “nonsense” and the spin wizard would not be a part of it if there was going to be a conflict with BCCI.
Erksine said that he had spoken to Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland about the matter.
“I asked him (Sutherland) politically what the situation is,” Erskine was quoted by ‘The Australian.’
“He tells me that the BCCI are going to be in a situation where they’re probably going to get upset by it. He wonders whether all the Indian players they say they’re going to pick will fly in the face of the BCCI. We will wait and see what the political fallout is before anyone puts pen to paper.”