One of crickets’ greatest rivalries was rekindled on June 11 at the launch of the Stanford 20/20 for 20 where Sir Allen Stanford on behalf of the Stanford 20/20 Board, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) announced a new five match series for the richest team prize for a single sporting match of US$20million.
Commencing from November 1, 2008, the series of five annual ‘winner takes all matches’ will be hosted at the spectacular Stanford Cricket Ground in Antigua, where the Stanford Super Stars will defend the pride of the islands against England under the lights and electric atmosphere synonymous with Stanford 20/20.
According to Sir Allen Stanford, Chairman of Stanford Financial Group, and founder of the Stanford 20/20 tournament, the confirmation of the series was another great step forward for cricket in the Caribbean:
“I see the Stanford 20/20 for 20 as a fantastic opportunity for current players in the Stanford 20/20 tournament to take a giant leap into the spotlight and gain exposure to top class opposition. The Stanford 20/20 for 20 will be a highly anticipated event, not just because of the prize money, but because of the traditional friendly rivalry that exists between England and the West Indies. I can’t think of a better example of the people who personify this rivalry, will to win, and mutual respect more than our guests today Sir Viv Richards and Sir Ian Botham. Their values and fighting spirit are also everything that Stanford 20/20 cricket represents and strives for”.
The June 11 launch drew support from some of the icons of English and West Indies cricket including Sir Ian Botham and Stanford Legends Sir Vivian Richards, Sir Everton Weekes, Desmond Haynes, Richie Richardson and Curtly Ambrose.
Months of planning with the ECB and WICB have resulted in the series being confirmed as ICC authorised matches. ECB Chairman Giles Clarke explained that the new series represented the boards’ commitment to supporting the world-wide growth of 20/20 cricket and the opportunities for its players:
“We are extremely delighted that Sir Allen has chosen to work in partnership with the ECB. These matches will offer a chance for not only international cricketers but cricket at all levels - both here and in the Caribbean - to benefit. It is a hugely exciting time for cricket and particularly Twenty20 cricket”.
According to the WICB President Julian Hunte, the Stanford 20/20 for 20 will play an increasingly important role in developing cricket in the region:
“Today is an important day for West Indies Cricket and our emphasis on cricket development. The goal we have set ourselves in our strategic plan is to regain our rightful place at the pinnacle of world cricket by 2012. To achieve this goal we need to have more people, especially our youth, developing a passion for the game. The financial support, and the partnership with Stanford 20/20 and the ECB are pivotal to the future of West Indies cricket. Right now, we are everybody’s second best team. In four years we will be the best team in the world.”
The Stanford 20/20 for 20 is the latest sporting sponsorship confirmed by Sir Allen, and is part of an overall investment plan for developing the profile, future players, and renewed success of West Indies cricket. The Stanford Financial Group is also the title sponsor for such sporting events as the Stanford US Open Polo Championship, the Stanford USPA Silver Cup, the Stanford Antigua Sailing Week, the PGA Tour Stanford St. Jude Championship and the Stanford International Pro-Am.

 

Dhaka, (IANS) — An all-round performance helped Pakistan beat India by 25 runs to clinch the Kitply Cup one-day tri-series at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium Saturday.
For Pakistan, centuries by Man of the Match Salman Butt (129 retired hurt) and Younis Khan (108) helped to pile a formidable 315 runs for the loss of three wickets in their 50 overs.
In reply, India gave a tough fight but were bowled out for 290 runs in 48.2 overs. Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni waged a lonely fight with his brilliant 64 after his deputy Yuvraj Singh (56) departed the scene.
It was a good toss to win and Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik wasted no time in opting to bat to exploit the excellent batting conditions.
Dhoni did try to shuffle his bowlers and tried as many as eight bowlers but to no avail.
Even the move to bring young leg-spinner Piyush Chawla backfired as he ended up being the most expensive Indian spinner in an ODI, conceding 85 runs in his 10 overs. Only Irfan Pathan proved to be effective snapping two wickets for 59 runs.
India got off to a bad start losing Virender Sehwag for two in the second over. Gautam Gambhir (40) and Rohit Sharma (24) tried to build the innings. But their 59-run stand was broken after Rohit mistimed a hook off Umar Gul and was caught.
A 59-ball 56 by Yuvraj kept India in the hunt but he too couldn't convert his innings into a big one that could save the team. Dhoni made a last ditch effort to take India through but started losing partners at the other end.
With nine chips down, Dhoni charged Shahid Afridi in the 49th over with a huge six before being caught at deep mid-wicket.

 

By Mukul Kesavan
An enormous, mural-like picture of Kapil Dev, side-on in his familiar pre-delivery leap, has been removed from the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium at Mohali. When asked about its abrupt disappearance, the secretary of that association disingenuously explained that it hadn’t been removed for good: the association was merely looking for a new place for it. Everyone else drew the obvious conclusion: the removal of the giant image was the latest in a series of steps taken by the BCCI to punish Kapil Dev for joining the Zee-sponsored Indian Cricket League as chairman. More generally, it was part of the BCCI’s bid to outlaw the ICL and its personnel and to cut them off from the structures of competitive cricket sanctioned by the ICC and operated by its affiliated boards.
Thus, a young player like Ambati Rayudu, 22, one of Hyderabad’s brightest first-class batting prospects, faces a lifetime in the cricketing wildernesss, barred from playing any form of recognized cricket because he signed up with the ICL team, Hyderabad Heroes. Similarly Shane Bond, once the New Zealand Test team’s bowling spearhead, is barred from playing first-class cricket in New Zealand because he joined the ICL.

The BCCI and the ICC run a cricketing monopoly which has been challenged twice, first by Kerry Packer and Channel 9, then by India’s Kerry Packer wannabe, Subhash Chandra, and his Zee network. The first time round, Packer’s rebels created a parallel ‘circus’ and staged ‘Test’ matches that entertained Packer’s television audiences, but never counted for anything in Wisden or cricket’s statistical record. Packer’s pirates were banned from officially sanctioned cricket but, eventually, when Packer and cricket’s establishment settled their dispute, his mercenaries went back to playing Test and first-class cricket. Pakistan’s Packer stars — Imran Khan, Majid Khan, Mushtaq Muhammad, Zaheer Abbas — returned to help their Test team destroy Bedi’s men during that 1978 tour of Pakistan that marked the resumption of cricket between the two countries. Kapil Dev debuted on that tour.
A monopoly of any kind will guard its turf jealously, so the BCCI’s behaviour should come as no surprise. At some stage, an English or Australian or New Zealand player, contracted to the ICL, will challenge his disbarment from his home country’s cricket and the courts will have to decide if this ICC-sanctioned ostracism has the force of law. If it can be shown that it constitutes an infringement of a person’s right to livelihood or a restraint on trade, men like Rayudu will find a way back into the mainstream of cricket. Or else it’s possible that once the ICL experiment is snuffed out, the BCCI might magnanimously let these black sheep return to its fold.
However this is resolved, what should worry the game’s followers is the fact that at the very moment that Indian cricket embraced entrepreneurial capitalism in the form of franchised Twenty20 cricket, its apex body dusted off a Stalinist bag of tricks to hunt down Right Revisionists and Left Adventurists and running dogs and indeed anyone who didn’t fall in line. I have no great fondness for Kapil Dev in his post-retirement avatar; his tears on television some years ago, his posturing about the unfairness of the press and his attempt to spin his ICL tenure as a form of cricketing social service, left me unmoved. But there’s something truly creepy about the BCCI’s attempt to unperson him and his ICL colleagues.

In Milan Kundera’s great novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, a party boss borrows a subordinate’s hat to keep his head warm during a group photograph. Soon after the photo is taken, the subordinate falls out of favour and is eliminated from both life and public memory. He is neatly airbrushed out of the group photograph. But, and this is the point that the BCCI should attend to, erasing a person from history is hard; there’s always something he leaves behind. In the case of the lowly party official, it was his hat.
Unfortunately for Indian cricket’s politburo, Kapil Dev isn’t an anonymous apparatchik (as most BCCI members are); he is, arguably, the greatest cricketer India has ever produced and the ‘hat’ he left behind him is inconveniently conspicuous: it is the World Cup he won for India in 1983. So even if the BCCI succeeds in its attempt to remove Kapil Dev from contemporary cricket, scouring him from public memory is likely to be harder.
But you have to admire the BCCI for trying. Its leaders are ambitious men with formidable organizational skills, not to be put off by mere reputation. The BCCI did its best not to commemorate the silver jubilee of the World Cup victory because the drama of such a commemoration would have been hard to carry off without giving the winning team’s skipper a speaking role. Finally, when Gavaskar and Kapil Dev both made it clear that the celebrations would go on with or without the Indian cricket establishment, the Board was shamed into agreeing to participate, since it didn’t want to come across as a bunch of vindictive little men.
The most revealing aspect of the BCCI’s vendetta against ICL’s recruits was its decision to cut off the pensions awarded to ex-cricketers for their services to first-class and international cricket. Kapil Dev can probably afford to do without an annuity, but that isn’t the point. If these pensions were granted in recognition of past service, to cut them off on account of contemporary quarrels is a monstrous thing to do. The revocation of the pension is both material punishment and metaphorical erasure: it’s like saying, “We, the Board, have decided that your career, your service to cricket, your achievements, count for nothing in themselves unless they’re recognized by Us, because it is Our recognition that legitimizes your past and your present, that makes it visible.” Thus pensions aren’t benefits that cricketers have earned, they are stipends granted by the BCCI, Indian cricket’s chief patron, which can be revoked on a whim.
On an online discussion group called Cricket Forum, one comment took the BCCI’s campaign to its logical conclusion: “BCCI should pass a resolution that retro-actively strips Kapil Dev of the captainship of (sic) Indian team — including the 1983 WC winning team. That BCCI can then say — Kapil Dev was never captain of India. That should make (the) BCCI feel very good.”
In this seemingly paradoxical combination of Stalinism and successful capitalism, the BCCI is doing no more than following the example of the CPC, the Communist Party of China. The BCCI ought to revise the titles it gives its panjandrums to reflect this correspondence. Mr Pawar could stop being President of the BCCI and become its Chairman. And Mr Modi, plainly diminished by his current description as Commissioner, IPL, could be known, as he so richly deserves to be, as its Commissar.

 

Australia beat West Indies by 87 runs on the final day Monday of the third cricket Test at Kensington Oval and won the series 2-0. West Indies, chasing an improbable 475 to win, was all out for 387 after lunch in a bold attempt at victory.
Australia scored 216 and 439 for five declared, and West Indies made 216 in its first innings.
The world record victory target looked possible when Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Dwayne Bravo resumed the innings Monday at 235 for three, but after they hit half centuries, both were removed within three balls of each other in the morning, and West Indies' hopes faded.
Chanderpaul made 50 and was named man of the series. He notched 8,000 runs when he reached 49, the fourth West Indian to the mark after Brian Lara (11,953), Sir Vivian Richards (8,540) and Sir Garfield Sobers (8,032).
Australia's Simon Katich, with a career-best 157 in the second innings, was named man of the match.
Australia won the first Test in Jamaica by 95 runs, and West Indies fought back to draw the second in Antigua.
The teams play a Twenty20 match at Kensington Oval on Friday and begin a five-match one-day series June 24.

 

Karachi, (IANS) — Temperamental fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar's five-year ban was reduced to 18-months, but a fine of Rs. 7 million was slapped on him by the Pakistan Cricket Board's (PCB) tribunal here Saturday.
"The tribunal has taken the decision with a clear conscience and under no pressure from either the board or anyone else," tribunal chief Aftab Farrukh told reporters here, adding that the three-member tribunal unanimously felt the original sentence was too harsh on the player.
In April, Shoaib was banned for five years for repeatedly violating the code of conduct.
"We also took into consideration the past record of Shoaib and his public apology for his behaviour and past deeds," Farrukh said.
"He has promised to reform himself and we have also recommended to the board that he should be given proper counselling."
The fast bowler's lawyer Abid Hasan Minto said the player had the right to pursue an appeal against the 18-month ban.
"But we will take a decision after going through the long and detailed order of the tribunal," Minto said.

New Delhi, (IANS) — The review of on-field umpiring decisions will be on a trial during the India-Sri Lanka three-Test series, starting July 23 in Colombo.
Announcing this, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Niranjan Shah stated that during the trial, a player can ask for a review of any decision of an on-field umpire pertaining to the batsman's dismissal with the exception of 'timed out'. A player can ask for the review making a 'T' sign raising both forearms head high.
After the review, the umpire should raise his finger as he normally does for giving out, or cross his hands in a horizontal position side to side in front and above his waist three times to indicate "not out."
Each team is allowed review of three decisions in an innings till they are all unsuccessful and any reversal of decision is not counted unsuccessful.
After three unsuccessful requests by one team, there can be no further review of decisions allowed in that innings.
If following review, an umpire upholds the decision of 'out', but for a different mode of dismissal from that for which the original decision was given, then the request will stand as unsuccessful.