Champions League T20 – A tournament not worth the name – Opinion - Part 1
When the Champions League T20 came to the fore, one saw it as another lucrative event, designed for a solitary purpose – money.
None other than BCCI would have the courage and audacity to initiate such a tournament but even they knew a little help would be required. On came Cricket Australia and South Africa, the other two mainstays of the sport, hoping to gain from what they recognized
as an opportunity for their own domestic teams to showcase their talents against the high-earning Indian Premier League boys.
The board members’ teams got an out and out right to take part in the competition, while leaving others to battle it out in a qualifying round, before only two teams made it to the tournament proper.
At first glance, the format seemed appropriate as a direct entrée is justifiable. However, an in depth analysis offers little rationale into the event’s format, with four IPL sides, and two each from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 making it straight to the main
draw, whereas teams from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 are left with only two places to fill.
That essentially doesn’t bode well with many critics and therefore, the international club competition tends to deceive many by naming itself the ‘Champions League T20’.
So is it worth the name? First things first, one cannot blame the shareholders for the biased nature of the format. In a money-making world, the cost of having few IPL teams is a lot. That thought was addressed by Jacques Faul, the acting CSA chief executive,
who said that the success of CLT20 depends on the Indian market.
Therefore, for other stakeholders, it leaves them with little to play for other than having two teams from their region, which leaves the other participants handicapped. So be it as other boards have hardly complained and the players know what they have
to achieve in order to progress to the main round.
With the advent of IPL, and subsequent T20 cricket in general, logic has taken a backseat. That irrationality has been understood by the game’s governing body, which either tends to go with the flow, or simply ignore its hype. IPL has indeed offered something
ridiculously special, and Big Bash has also thrown in a few surprises of its own, where one could have never imagined http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shane-Keith-Warne-c89672 performing again. So on the other side, there are positives for everyone
to take out.
The other boards do not condone its presence, but take a standoffish route, which offers them the leverage to criticize the existence of such a league. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Robert-John-Inverarity-c85980, the Australian chief selector, said that CLT20 had indeed hampered the national team’s
preparation ahead of a crucial series against South Africa.
However, his choice of words still offered a balance so that it does not directly offend CA, or for the larger matter, the BCCI, all of whom have a pivotal part to play in the existence of such a format in the first place.
To be continued....
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