India’s rebel twenty-20 league launched today..!

A glitzy ceremony Friday marked the start of India’s breakaway Twenty20 cricket league in the northern town of Panchkula with an eye catching performance by Bollywood star Kareena Kapoor.The Indian Cricket League (ICL) has been dubbed a rebel league as it was not sanctioned by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which has retaliated by planning its own Indian Premier League (IPL) to be launched in April.

The six-team ICL, promoted by a television company, offers prize money of US$3.85 million.

The inaugural match of the league Friday featured Delhi Jets, captained by former Sri Lankan skipper Marvan Atapattu, and Chanidgarh Lions, which is being led by ex-New Zealand allrounder Chris Cairns.Ex-West Indies captain Brian Lara and former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq are the biggest stars featuring in the tournament for which several young Indian players have signed up, despite the risk of in future being barred from matches sanctioned by the BCCI.Lara is leading Mumbai Champs, while Inzamam is the captain of Hyderabad Heroes.Other teams have been named Kolata Tigers and Chennai Superstars.

A new rule has been introduced in the ICL which disallows any overthrows if the fielder’s throw hits the stumps.Four top teams from the round-robin league spread over two weeks will advance to the knockout semifinals.

The ICL’s executive board is headed by India’s 1983 World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev.Dev’s decision to join the breakaway league prompted the cricket board to remove him from the honourary position of chairman of the National Cricket Academy. Sandip Patil, Madan Lal and Balwinder Sandhu, all members of the 1983 World Cup champion team, have followed Dev and signed up with the ICL. They have taken up coaching assignments for ICL teams that feature some top foreign stars and Indian youngsters.

India’s cricket board tried to block the ICL’s progress by making it difficult for the unofficial league’s promoters to hire cricket grounds. The rebel league is being compared with Kerry Packer’s World Cricket Series that split world cricket in the 1970s. Packer’s World Cricket Series signed up top international players from several countries in an era when players were not well remunerated and had no endorsements. While Packer got the cream of world cricket, the Indian league seems to be attracting only the retired stars.

ps: is indian cricket a new playground for indian politicians?

india vs pakistan!

ha, reached delhi today morning… got a bit late.. had made plans of watching india pakistan test match at feroz shah kotla ground earlier..
went home.. dumped my stuff.. changed.. had breakfast.. and then me and my cousin bro left for kotla.. reached there at 11 i guess.. there was a looooooong queue of visitors desperately trying to enter the premises of the pavilion. The was a lot of security around.. armed guards were patrolling around the stadium.. even we had to go through some 6 security check before we could reach our stand.. ours was the east wing lower stand.. we got some pretty good seats.. third from the front.. we could easily see all the happenings..
it was pretty fun.. there were some funny slogans being sung.. had a nice time.. a much needed break.. btw few of the slogans were..

“north south east west, indian tigers are the best”.

when zaheer was standing in front of our stand, the crowd was shouting
“arre zaheer muh dikhai ka kya lega”

well there was this weird guy who was sitting in front of our row..he was muslim.. i never thought abt it.. but this guy and an incident which happened later on made me think.. will post all this in a different post some day.. there was something which made me kinda hate this guy.. every time wasim jaffer or zaheer used to come near our stands, he used to shout at them “abe tu ja, uss sale harbhajan/ganguly ko hata..jakar dikha de ki hamari kom kya kar sakti hai”.. or he used to shout at times “karthik ko hatao, kaif ko layo”.

there are some questions which are bothering me a lot..

is this hindu-muslim thing still there?
has it reached our sports also?
will now our cricket team be governed by it?
will we ever forget religion?
is being a hindu/muslim really important to us?

hmmm.. lets c when will i get answers to all my questions..

ps: i tried, tried hard but could not.. i failed..