Hyderabad Heroes Vs. Ahmedabad Rockets - ICL Edelweiss 20s Challenge Cricket Match

With the Deccan Chargers IPL team launched this week amid fanfare, the Indian Cricket League (ICL) matches making headlines at least for Bollywood beauties, and the matches of the Deodhar Trophy in progress, Hyderabad is witnessing cricket at a scale that's never been seen before. Here's more.

As part of the ongoing season, ICL is hosting the Edelweiss 20s Challenge cricket matches at 3 venues across the country - Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Gurgaon. A total of 34 matches involving 8 teams will be played at these venues. Hyderabad is organising 9 league matches and 1 semifinal. The matches in Hyderabad will all be played at the Lal Bahadur Stadium.

Today, the 21st of March, Hyderabad Heroes will clash with the Ahmedabad Rockets. The match starts at 7pm, and is the 5th match of Hyderabad schedule.

Hyderabad Heroes is captained by the experienced New Zealand allrounder Chris Harris, coached by Steve Rixon, and has international stars such as the Pakistani allrounder Abdul Razzak, Australian batsman Jimmy Maher, South African spinner Nicky Boje and hard-hitting batsman Justin Kemp. The side also has youngsters such as Stuart Binny, Alfred Absolem, Anirudh Singh, Ibrahim Khaleel, Ambati Rayudu, Inder Shekhar Reddy, Kaushik Reddy, Shashank Nag, D Vinay Kumar, Baburao Yadav, Syed Sahabuddin and Zakaria Zuffri. The team has won two matches and lost one.

Ahmedabad Rockets is captained by the Australian batsman Damien Martyn and coached by England's John Emburey. The team has 2 points from the 3 matches it has played, and is in the 6th place of the points table. The other members of the team are Australian fast bowler Jason Gillespie, Zimbabwean alrounders Heath Streak and Murray Goodwin, West Indian opener Wavell Hinds, Parvez Aziz, Bhima Rao, Sachin Dholpure, Anshu Jain, Sumit Kalia, Rakesh Patel, Reetinder Sodhi, Sridharan Sriram, Abhishek Tamarkar, Pallav Vora and Baburao Yadav.

The Indian Cricket League (ICL) is a private cricket league that runs parallel to the existing cricket league managed by the BCCI. It is promoted by Zee Telefilms (part of Subash Chandra's Essel group), and was set up with a Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) corpus. The inaugural season of the ICL started in November 2007 with 6 teams. Each team will be coached by a former international cricketer, and will comprise 4 international, 2 Indian and 8 budding domestic players. The Essel Group is also planning to set up cricket academies all over the country.

Entry to the matches is by tickets of Rs. 200 and Rs. 500 per head, available at specific Music World outlets. Please contact 3988-0288 for further details.