Kolkata Tigers Vs Ahmedabad Rockets - ICL 20s Grand Championship Cricket Match

It's raining cricket in India, whether rebel or official, with lots of talk about the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and the Indian Premier League (IPL) doing the rounds. And the atmosphere in Hyderabad is no different.

There are 13 matches of ICL and 7 matches of IPL being played during a period of 2 months. From 9th March to 7th April, ICL will be 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. As part of this championship, Ahmedabad Rockets will clash with the Kolkata Tigers on 22nd March. The match starts at 7pm.

Ahmedabad Rockets is captained by the Australian batsman Damien Martyn and coached by England's John Emburey. The team has just 2 points from the 4 matches it has played, and is in the last 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.

New Zealand allrounder Craig MacMillan is the captain of Kolkata Tigers and Daryll Cullinan is its coach. The other members of the team are New Zealand allrounder Andre Adams, Sri Lankan allrounder Upul Chandana, South African allrounder Lance Klusener, South African fast bowler Nantie Hayward, Abu Nechim, Pritam Das, Subhomoy Das, Deep Dasgupta, Mihir Diwakar, Eklak Ahmid, Rohan Gavaskar, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Rajiv Kumar, Shibsagar Singh and Sujay Tarafdar. The team has won one, lost two and is languishing in the bottom half with two points along with the Chandigarh Tigers, Ahmedabad Rockets, Mumbai Champs and Kolkata Tigers.

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.