Weekend of Cricket

This weekend, like most others, I played some cricket with a team that I joined recently. We played a match in a local tourney here and even though it was no nail-biter, it had its moments.
A close game that went one way than another till about the last 15 min of play. We won the hard fought game eventually and now are at the top of our group.

Speaking of Cricket, a new cricket league has officially started in India called the Indian Cricket League (ICL). Its supposed to be a competitor to the BCCI in India.
ICL claims that they just want to help Indian Cricket by finding talented youngsters that have the potential of playing for India. They introduced 51 players at a glitzy ceremony yesterday and guess what, most of them are international rejects and semi-retired players (Press Conference). The remaining are players who have frequented the domestic circuit long enough to be "discovered" if they had talent to play at the highest level.

Lets face the truth. ICL has been established so that Zee can tap into the HUGE cricket market of the country. They are not here to serve Indian cricket by looking for youngsters and potential stars, they are here to make a buck (or millions). And the players joined to make a quick buck. Players like Lara and Inzy have finished their cricket careers and are now looking to make some quick money by playing minimum cricket. The rest were never in consideration for international selection anyway so they go where the money is (read: ICL)

But, on the flip side, its a welcome jolt to the BCCI who for too long has had a monopoly on the game. They run like a private organization and have done little or none to improve the domestic circuit in India. With the salaries that they offer the domestic players, its no surprise that fewer and fewer youngsters turn to cricket as a full-time profession and unless you don't treat cricket as a full-time profession, you're not going to reach the level thats required to play international cricket. They seem to be learning their lesson now but I wonder if they will ever match the kind of salaries that ICL is offering.

Here's the complete list of players who have signed contracts with ICL

International players
Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Abdul Razzaq, Imran Farhat, Lance Klusener, Nicky Boje

Indian players

Ambati Rayudu, Syed Abbas Ali Khan, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Abhishek T, Alfred Absolem, Avinash Yadav, Deep Dasgupta, V Devendran, Dheeraj Jadhav, Dinesh Mongia, Hemanth Kumar, Ibrahim Khaleel, Inder Shekar Reddy, Ishan Malhotra, J Hariesh, Jai Prakash Yadav, Kaushik Reddy, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Manish Sharma, Mohnish Mishra, Puskaraj Mohan Joshi, R Satish, Rajesh Sharma, Ranjit Khirid, Raviraj Patil, Reetinder Sodhi, Robin Morris, Sachin Dholpure, Sarabjit Singh, Syed Akhlakh Ahmed, Shalabh Srivastava, Shashank Nag, Shibsagar Singh, Shreyas Khanolkar, Subhojit Paul, Subhomoy Das, Sumit Kalia, Dakshinamoorthy Kumaran, T Surendra, Thirunavukarasu Kumaran, G Vignesh, D Vinay Kumar, Yashpal Singh