Hail the Indian Cricket League (ICL)

It started with nobody giving any thought to it but slowly as it progressed it gathered momentum and i am sure the TRP's for the semis and finals must be very high.

It came it showed and it conquered finally

Positives

• People will watch cricket if its played competitively stars don't make hell of a difference, Lara failed and as the tournament progressed Indian players rose and showed their caliber. Now I know a lot of players thiru kumaran, abas ali and many more who I would never have known had they languished under the BCCI.
• Hats of the Chandigarh and Panchkula people who came in large numbers in every match in this chilling winter, it again showed indian people will support cricket by anybody if its good.
  
• ICL is a good platform for those products and companies who cannot spent exorbitantly for marketing and advertising purposes, I expect more products to come in the future events and being city centric the companies of that particular cities can market themselves
• It gave a new meaning to advertising and marketing , fashion show between the innings in the finals, movies promos like Sunday team was there in the finals, previously Dus Kahaniya team was there.
  
• Learning experience for ex-cricketers who were coaches for the 6 teams and the results were visible in the splendid fielding done by the lads awesome catches and run outs. Hats off to the spirit :).
• I felt very bad when Chandigarh lost as I could co-relate to the team , being from haryana living in noida , cities team concept is good. I am sure the teams would increase slowly we can expect Lucknow Nawabs, Pune Hunks, Ahmedabad Rockies.
• Hats of to the Essel group for bringing such a good panel of umpires, commentators and specially Whitney.
• Now about the dancers, I observer them growing fatter day be day :) all thanks to the Punjabi food they must be relishing the Indian experience.
• Big pat on the back for the whole team for success of the tournament.
  

• Calendar Year 2008 (from ICL website)
  

  S.No	Month	Tournament	Particulars
  1.	February 08	Domestic Championship	50 Over tournament Indian players to play
  2.	February – March 08	Triangular Series to field ICL XI.	20 20 Over Tournament
  3.	March – April 08	ICL Grand Championship	20 20 Over Tournament 8 Teams to participate in the tournament. Increase of 2 Teams.
  4.	April – May 08	ICL to Open Academies in prominent cities.
  5.	September – October 08	ICL Invitation Cup	20 20 Over Tournament 8 Teams to participate in the tournament
  6.	November – December 08	ICL 20 20 Indian Championships 2nd Edition.	20 20 Over Tournament 8 Teams to participate in the tournament.

Work to be done

• We need more grounds, I hope now ICL would be able to get more grounds and I think ICL can play a leading role in spreading the cricket to far off places in India, we normally have stadiums in every city and that can be uplifted for playing cricket and the crowd is sure to come, I remember 2-3 years back in my native city Hisar Asian Junior Boxing Championship was organized and I was shocked to see the crowd going to watch that. Play some matches in East India in Assam, play some in Orissa. Spread ICL spread cricket, if England can have 3-4 football leagues India can have many cricket leagues.
  
• Reachability of the Zee Sports has to be increased , more the eyes watching the better it is.
• Spread it outside India, i have written it before also, go to Pakistan, go to Sri lanka , go to Bangladesh and even bring one team of native Asian community with some england players from South Hall UK and even one from USA. It will take time but there is lot of scope

Special Hats Off to the one and only one Legend Kapil Dev who is not working just to earn money and filling the coffers like the other greats of Indian cricket are doing, i don't want to name them but you could guess easily.

Go ICL Go

Meanwhile Arsenal Won vo hoooooooooooo
Khali Lost watched today morning on IndiaTV to a 49 year old lad, felt sad :)

ICL, IndianCricketLeague, KapilDev, ZeeSports, Khali

Australia Tour : What should be the playing eleven

Sachin is batting like his good old days, dada is scoring centuries , laxman there can be no doubt ever at his abilities the wall dravid can never be out of form for long , yuvraj has joined the party even pathan has scored century with such form who would say that we can loose.

But this is all true in subcontinent what will happen in Australia a month will tell and i am waiting anxiously for Aussies series this time I am not saying words like this is the last chance like the media hyped during the world cup 2007 but we stand a decent chance not good though.

Let's analyze

Openers: who will open karthik is struggling in scoring runs jaffer is certainty, yuvraj is banging for place in the playing 11 so who will open with Jaffer, perhaps the selectors will ask dravid to open giving reason that he normally bats at number 3 so one position will not affect, but you cannot expose the best player of the team so early to the opposition like Australia remember the last tour it was only because of the start given by akash chopra and sehwag that we were able to score above 400 runs in good number of innings.

But most probable opening stand looking so far
Jaffer
Dravid

now whom to send one down sending sachin one down is not good ploy he is a shaky started all knows that and when the pitch is having moisture in the early one hour you are exposing another top class player too early.

Best bet can be Laxman

So

Jaffer
Dravid
Laxman
Sachin
Ganguly
Yuvraj
Dhoni

Now coming to bowlers

Zaheer , sreesanth , rp singh is injured, i wish they recover early and are ready for the tour. From Sreesanth I am expecting exploits downunder they will go after him and will surely give them wickets and first of all he is a good pace bowler in SA he showed that and in Australia he can be evil a mix of agression and pace will do the work.

Zaheer
RP Singh
Kumble
Sreesanth

But pathan is also bowling good so if one of the bowler is not fit Pathan should be taken but in first test sreesanth should be given chance.

It all depends on start in Australia if we get a good start we will get to their never, their bowling attack is not that lethal now and the way indian team is scoring runs though in India but it must have given the players confidence for the australian tour.

Lets get used to the habit of waking up early in the morning nowadays if we want to watch the series of the year.

What say you guys is this the best playing eleven available and what about the order also ?


Cricket Australia India Downunder

Something to Write

It's been a long long time since I have written anything, no not anything , anything except code. In the initial days Luthra kept egging us on to write something but now even he has got into the habit of writing only Code. Now since I have got no body to motivate me, I remember the words of one of our Professor – Self – motivation, ya self motivation is the word. So here I am trying to put something which makes some sense.
Last time I wrote I think it was after Wimbledon, some 5 month back. So I will try to recount all those events which occur in these months.
Cricket –we won the world Cup, what a tournament that was, that victory was the clear reflection of new India, bold, fearless and in your face attitude. But that victory gives rise to another debate, seniors vs. juniors, which is quite a natural thing corresponding to the fact that it was the youth which brought glory to our country. But do u think that Sachin Tendulkar is not among the best 11 players. Well I cant imagine an Indian team without Sachin, may be I am biased, but for me he alone is the man who is responsible for the growth of cricket. For my generation the image of Tendulkar Cover drive will always be the first one which comes to our mind, when the topic of Cricket comes up. And as far as Indian Cricket is concerned best is to enjoy it and then forget it. Leave the analyzing and dissecting part to India TV and AajTak Experts. They will definitely find out who is “Match ka Muzrim” .
Tennis – the only new finding of the past quarter Roger Federer can be defeated and that too by a 35 year old man. But that man is one Pete Sampras. Man that guy at 35 can still play, and play well to defeat Federer. Roddick hasn’t done that for I don’t know how many years. Well I would strongly suggest USTA to contact him for Davis Cup final against Russia. There is no way he will ever lose against the likes of Daveydenko and company. Other than that FedEx was quite awesome, you just cant hate that guy , you will want the other guy to win but still you will never want him to lose, and in most of the other cases it’s the second feeling which get the better of the first.
Football – beautiful game is it?? Arsene Wenger young lad shows us it’s still a beautiful game. Fabregas,Hleb,Rosicky,van persie make us forget certain Thierry Henry. Arsenal right now is at top , but this time surely the league is much more interesting with anyone of the big 4 having good chance of lifting the cup. And one more thing we wont be able to Stevei G and Wayne Rooney in next years Euro.
So my crap comes to an end. Do I miss something ya one thing Chak De India !! wonderful movie desi do write something on that….

..

ICL : Beginning of a new ERA

Tomorrow a new chapter will be written in the history of cricket in India, when the monopoly of the most mismanaged highly bureaucratic and run by the same politicians who have ruined this nation in short BCCI will be challenged with the opening game of the ICL between Chandigarh Lions and Delhi Jets . Lot of people are saying that the launch of BCCI's IPL have taken away the craze or hype or motive from the ICL but in my opinion in a big country like India there is a scope for 2-3 cricket leagues.

Lots of sponsors have gone away at the last moment but these initial glitches are bound to take place whenever a new thing is started. The league will be a learning platform for the youngsters who have decided to leave the tent of monopolistic BCCI and join the ICL. All the 6 teams have got players of awesome reputation as the coach also.

jerseys of the teams

These is a lot of scope for the ICL, it can be expanded to the subcontinent. There will be lot of players in the pakistan who will be game for ICL same is the case in lanka and bangladesh. I see the number of teams like Lahore Warriors, Karachi Champs , Dhaka Tigers and Colombo Rambos coming in few years and even more teams because there are lot of cricket players in the subcontinent who deserve more then what they are getting now. One would say that without stars nobody would watch them play, in my opinion there are lot of fans of the game in the world who would watch the young players become stars, many of us watch the county twenty20 cricket and we enjoy the matches.

With great Kapil Dev at the helm there is no doubt that the ICL's 3D strategy of Discovery, Diligence and Display succeeds will succeed.

Now coming to the launch, its expected to be a gala event. Business tycoons like Anil Ambani filmstars Akshay Kumar, Aamir Khan are expected to grace the ocassion and with Zee deciding the telecast 30 minutes of game in every zee channel I would be able to watch the game :)

img: from ICL website


Cricket, IndianCricketLeague, Lara

Good Luck Kumble

Though a bit late as the test has already been started but still better late then never, we wish good luck to kumble for his first test as captain.
We at penthegame were the first one to predict that ' kumble will be made captain' because we always believed that kumble deserve more then what he has been given till now.
In the poll conducted we got 199 votes though there were some hard core dada fans polling for him many times.
I believe that series against pakistan will be cakewalk for the Indians as Pakistani team is missing the aggression required to win the series.
Regular meetings between the two teams is slowly deteriorating the passion which used to be there when India Pakistan used to meet.

Real test for kumble will come in the series against Australia and I am eagerly waiting for that series.

Will write about the ICL soon :)