Indian Cricket League

The Indian Cricket League, the Twenty20 competition organised by Zee TV to run parallell to the BCCI’s regular season in October, has become a surprising success with the following players confirmed as contracted to it and more in talks:

Damien Martyn
Abbas Ali
Abhijit Shetye
Abhishek Jhunjhunwala
Alfred Absolem
Ali Murtaza
Ambati Rayudu
Anirudh Singh
Avinash Yadav
Dakshinamoorthy Kumaran
Deep Dasgupta
Devendran
Devishetty Vinay Kumar
Dheeraj Jadhav
Dinesh Mongia
Ganapathi Vignesh
Hariesh J
Hemang Badani
Hemanth Kumar
Ibrihim Khalil
Indhrasekhar Reddy
Ishan Malhatra
Jai Prakash Yadav
Karthik Reddy
Manish Sharma
Mohammad Ibrahim
Monish Mishra
Rajesh Sharma
Ranjeet Khirid
Raviraj Patil
Reetinder Sodhi
Robin Morris
Sachin Talpade
Sarabjit Singh
Satish R
Shashank Nag
Shalabh Srivastava
Shibsagar Singh
Shreyas Khanolkar
Sridharan Sriram
Subhojit Paul
Subhomoy Das
Sumit Kalia
Taduri Prakash Sudhindra
Thirunavakarasu Kumaran
Yashpal Singh
Abdul Razzaq
Azhar Mahmood
Imran Farhat
Inzamam-Ul-Haq
Mohammad Yousuf
Lance Klusener
Nicky Boje
Brian Lara

Scotland lose again

Scotland’s second ODI outside the UK ended in defeat. They won the toss and chose to field against Bangladesh, and the home team finished on 278-6. Scotland were dismissed for just 132, another failure while batting. Their top scorer was Fraser Watts, who made 29.

Scotland’s batting has not been good enough so far and they desperately need to improve before the World Cup.

Pakistan bounce back

Pakistan look to have got over their recent setbacks (Ovalgate, drugs, captaincy) with a straightforward win over the West Indies in Lahore. A huge 192 from Mohammad Yousuf pretty much won the game for them. Good to see that they aren’t letting problems bother them on the field as they often did in the past.

At least that’s over

The ICC Champions Trophy qualifying round is over with the predictable result that Sri Lanka and the West Indies have gone through. It really is time to write off this tournament now. Replace it with the Twenty20 World Championship.

England ask for joke games on Ashes tour

Cricinfo report that the ECB have asked Cricket Australia to allow them to use all sixteen members of their squad in their warm up games. It really is about time the ICC stopped this. It makes a mockery of cricket, and it doesn’t give the team with the 16 players any idea of how their players play as a team. It’s a joke.

Inzamam cleared of ball tampering

Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq has been cleared of ball tampering in his disciplinary hearing. He has, however, been found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute, which he always going to be found guilty of.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Darrell Hair now. Will the ICC keep backing him, or give him the pay off he asked for?

Hair raising times

It has been revealed today that the BCCI have written to the ICC asking them to not select Darrel Hair as an umpire for the Champions Trophy. The umpire list was supposed to have been announced last week.

I also hope that Hair isn’t selected, as he is quite possibly the most incompetent umpire on the “Elite” panel at the moment. But the ICC musn’t bow down to the BCCI over anything. If they want to select Hair, they shouldn’t let a letter from the BCCI stop them. The ICC run international cricket, not the BCCI.

Big win for Australia in DLF Cup final

Australia have beaten the West Indies by 127 runs in the DLF Cup final in Kuala Lumpur. Batting first, the Aussies scored 240/6 from their 50 overs, Damien Martyn and Andrew Symonds both making 52. No West Indian batsman got a decent start, and Brett Lee took 4/24 to help dismiss the West Indies for just 113.

Australia win after close fought game

Another close game in the DLF Cup has seen Australia beat India by 18 runs. The Aussies batted first and Matthew Hayden scored 54 at the top of the order. But other than the two Brad’s (Haddin and Hogg) putting on a 77 runs partnership in the middle order, no other batsman contributed much, and they were dismissed for 213.

Dinesh Mongia scored 63 for India in their reply, but no batsman could stay with him, and Brett Lee took 5/38 to help bowl the Indians out for 195. Australia will now face the West Indies in Sunday’s final.

Women’s Rankings updated

The BOV Women’s rankings have been updated. (Link) There hasn’t been any change to the order of the teams from the last updated at the end of August, but we have seen the new entry of the various teams that have played World Cup qualifiers this month.