A Dog's Breakfast of ChampionsThis Twenty20 Tournament Will be Fun, but Standards Are Questionable
By RICHARD LORD
Soccer's UEFA Champions League is the world's foremost competition for professional clubs.
In field hockey, the FIH Champions Trophy is the international game's premier annual tournament.
But when it comes to cricket, it seems that every tournament with "Champions" in its title is destined to be devalued, disparaged and generally to suffer from a serious credibility deficit.
For starters, there's the ICC Champions Trophy, whose biggest problem is irrelevance: This always-the-bridesmaid tournament styled itself as a mini World Cup, but has never captured the imagination of players or fans amid the glut of international fixtures. It is to be shelved in 2013.
Then there's the Champions League Twenty20, which started Tuesday in South Africa. Its problems are more systemic—this is a tournament that was doomed from the outset to be undercut by its own format and rules.
Like its parent tournament, the Indian Premier League, it features top domestic sides from around the world and offers great entertainment on the field. But where the IPL exists under a permanent cloud of suspicion about whether every team operates on a level playing field, with the CLT20 there's no such ambiguity: It is very obviously a carve-up. This is mostly because the tournament is owned and run not by the International Cricket Council, as you'd expect of a competition that draws its teams from around the globe, but by the governing bodies of India, South Africa and Australia, while its chair is N. Srinivasan, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
This strange state of affairs is reflected in the CLT20's format, which favors teams from the tournament-founding nations—and especially those from the IPL, whose fans provide it with its key television audience (this is also the reason why the tournament switches between India and South Africa, ignoring Australia, where the time difference is unhelpful for an Indian audience.)
Like its soccer namesake, the Champions League Twenty20 is a misnomer. The teams taking part aren't exclusively national champions, but a selection of top sides from different nations. Nor are places allocated solely on merit: In this year's event, the IPL receives four invites, the South African, Australian and English T20 competitions each get two berths, and the domestic leagues in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies and New Zealand receive one each. In addition, the teams from the three founding nations are guaranteed a bye through the qualifying round, which means all but two of the other six teams are sent home. With $2.5 million on offer for the winner—the highest prize money in cricket history—, that kind of leg-up can prove very useful.
England could have been in on this cozy little arrangement, but lost its chance after a split with tournament organizers before the first edition was played. The reason was the BCCI's ruthless policy concerning anyone connected with its now-defunct rival, the Indian Cricket League. Some English county teams employed former ICL players; a situation that the BCCI objected to. This year, two English sides are in the qualifying rounds, but they aren't likely to get far in the tournament. Next year, English teams aren't even planning to take part.
The ICL, of course, was swept aside by the IPL, and thanks to its format it's the IPL teams that usually dominate the CLT20. As well as receiving twice as many berths as any other national league, the very nature of the IPL ensures its teams are stronger: There are currently only nine franchises (although there have been between eight and 10), and thanks to their enormous wealth, they pretty much get to share out the world's best players between them.
In addition, they get preferential rights to them in the CLT20: If a player has represented both an IPL team and a team from a different country participating in the competition (the domestic T20 merry-go-round means that some players invariably have represented several teams), the IPL franchise gets first refusal. It has to compensate the other team, but it can afford it.
As is often the case, this issue is most acute with players from West Indies, a region stacked with talented players, but too poor and lightly populated to match the lucrative salaries on offer in other countries. The upshot is that Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo and Sunil Narine are competing in this year's tournament for their IPL teams rather than for Trinidad and Tobago, which is the country of their birth. (although it competes in T20 as a domestic side.)
In fact, it is surprising that Trinidad is fielding a side here at all: Its players refused to travel to South Africa unless they were given a share of the money received by the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board from the IPL teams for the services of Pollard, Bravo and Narine.
Fortunately, there is one area in which the teams in this year's tournament are all equal: their composition. Last year, unforgivably,Mumbai Indians was allowed to field five overseas players rather than the usual four because of a rash of injuries, a nonsense that appeared to suggest that the team was unable to find a single fit replacement in the whole of Maharashtra.
It may be no coincidence that Mumbai went on to win that tournament, beating Royal Challengers Bangalore in the final. The previous year, the IPL's Chennai Super Kings took the title and only the inaugural tournament in 2009, which was won by New South Wales Blues, hasn't featured an IPL team in the final. The absence of a finalist from the IPL hit TV ratings hard and the change to the format, with four IPL teams instead of three, was mostly in order to make sure it doesn't happen again. This year, another all-IPL final is more than likely.
To be sure, the action over the next three weeks will likely be a lot of fun, and may unearth a new talent or two; this was the stage on which both Pollard and Narine first came to wider attention. But as much as the players will be desperate to win it, and for all the scintillating feats they are sure to produce, in doing so, the CLT20 is a tournament that, as currently constituted, will always feel more like a hollow, money-making exercise than a legitimate cricket competition.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578048341368025964.html?mod=googlenews_wsj------------------------------------------
CLT20: No level-playing field, as different rules govern different teams!The Champions League is not truly representative of the champion teams because it has different set of rules for Indian teams and another for foreign teams. The clout of the BCCI is obvious, but it’s a ticking time bomb and the Indian cricket board better watch out, cautions Nishad Pai Vaidya.
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The Auckland Aces of New Zealand and the English side Yorkshire Carnegie have stormed through to the main draw of the Champions League T20 (CLT20). With a dominating performance in the qualifying stages, the two sides have effectively eliminated the T20 champions from England, Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka. Looking at the number of champions exiting the tournament only two days into it, it does beg the question: Does the CLT20 create a level playing field for the champions from different countries? A closer inspection would reveal that the answer is a resounding no.
The CLT20 was meant to create a platform whereby the T20 champions from various countries would come and battle for the coveted title. The concept is along the lines of the popular UEFA Champions League – a competition where some of the best European football teams contest. However, the format employed for cricket’s version of the battle of the clubs leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn’t present the teams with equal opportunities for a shot at the title and is completely dominated by the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises. As discussed in previous articles, the CLT20 is nothing but an international extension of the IPL.
Firstly, one must ask the question: Why are the IPL teams given an undue advantage at the CLT20? There are four of them in the competition – two more than the maximum participation from other countries. While South Africa, Australia and England are represented by their respective champions and runners-up, only the champions from Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Pakistan and West Indies were given an entry. On the other hand, Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils – teams who didn’t make it to the IPL final find themselves in the main league!
Secondly, it is bizarre as to why the teams have to play a qualifying stage before making it into the main draw. Teams like Trinidad and Tobago, Sialkot Stallions and Uva Next are champions in their own right and deserve a direct entry into the main round. Instead, Mumbai and Delhi are direct entrants without even having silverware to show in their cabinet. The only positive when compared to the previous edition is that a team from Pakistan has been allowed participation.
Thirdly, Mumbai may have been champions the last time around, but shouldn’t have been given allowed a direct entry into the main round. The winners of the inaugural edition New South Wales failed to make it to the finals of their national T20 league the next season and didn’t qualify for the CLT20. However, they weren’t given an entry just because they were the champions of the previous edition. South Australia and Victoria turned up for the 2010 edition and New South Wales had to wait till 2011 for another shot at the title. Why are the rules being changed when an IPL team is involved?
The format for the qualifying stage is clearly flawed. A team that works hard through the domestic season has one bad day at the CLT20 and has to face elimination. Also, a team that plays the first game has a distinct advantage over those waiting for their chance. For example, Yorkshire won their first game against Uva on Tuesday and then faced Trinidad in their second game. The West Indian side had to win to keep their hopes alive, while Yorkshire’s fate wasn’t completely dependent on this game.
Trinidad and Tobago are a side that has entertained in previous CLT20s and are unfortunate to have lost out this time around. In the inaugural edition, they had a remarkable run through to the finals and were the most popular side of the competition. What is interesting is that they always tend to produce remarkable players – who later fall prey to the IPL franchises and don’t turn up for their home side at the CLT20. Their case proves that such teams deserve to be given an equal footing when compared to the teams given a preference as one never knows how they may perform. It is shameful that the one-time finalists have to go through a qualification round to prove their status even after they have been crowned champions in the West Indies.
Keeping all these arguments in perspective, the name “Champions League” is a misleading. The real champions aren’t given their due even as some of the lesser deserving teams get an upper hand. The clout of the Indian board is obvious and it wouldn’t be long before such moves unnerve other governing bodies around the world. They may be the major stakeholders in the tournament, but cannot go on creating norms to suit themselves. It is a ticking time bomb and the BCCI better watch out.
http://www.cricketcountry.com/cricket-articles/CLT20-No-level-playing-field-as-different-rules-govern-different-teams/18711
