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, Hyderabad Heroes will clash with the Chennai Superstars on 15th March. The match starts at 7pm.
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.
Chennai Superstars, winner of ICL's inaugural tournament, is headed by the Australian Stuart Law, and has some big names of world cricket like the Australian allrounders Michael Bevan and Ian Harvey, New Zealand's wicketkeeper batsman Adam Parore, Srilankan allrounder Russel Arnold, Pakistani bowler Shabbir Ahmed and hard-hitting Hemang Badani. Devendran, J Harish, Rajamani Jesuraj, Dakshinamoorthy Kumaran, Thirunavukkarasu Kumaran, Sathiamoorty Saravanan, Rajagopal Sathish, Jamaluddin Syed Mohammed and Ganapathi Vignesh are the other members of the team.
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. 100 and Rs. 500 per head, available at specific Music World outlets. Please contact SAAP at 2323-5052/2321-2818 for further details.
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