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Filed under ICL 2007

Not-a-thing is bad publicity. good bad or confused, they all work as long as people get interested!

Somebody from somewhere have given us/'Indian cricket fans' a new league of cricket (ICL) to watch on TV as we eat dinner of next 20 days. made up of cricketers from and for International level. Prizes are expensive & sixes are promised (its a twenty20 tournament). Kapil Dev is the head, so expect some passion but really ~ will this work? can ICL do what Ranji trophy never achieved?

I'll let you decide that but itsonlycricket will do coverage of this first essay of Indian cricket league 2007. Following is simple info you might ask on this cricket league before anything. or you can know what is ICL?

The inauguration
famous ladies like Kareena Kapoor & Yana Gupta join the band party whereas Akshay Kumar will dance to the tune of Indian cricket league's opening ceremony. I notice Aamir Khan reaching for ICL, which means the choosy actor gives the thumps up to this tournament. hmmm, interesting!

The ceremony should start somewhere around 5pm India time as we have Chandigrah Lions vs Delhi Jets match starting at 6pm.

Indian cricket league 2007 time table
30th Nov, Friday
Chandigrah Lions vs Delhi Jets | 6pm.
1st Dec, Saturday
Chennai Superstars vs Kolkatta Tigers | 12.30 pm.
Mumbai Champs vs Hyderabad Heros | 6pm.
2nd Dec, Sunday
Delhi Jets vs Hyderabad Heroes | 12.30pm.
Chandigrah Lions vs Kolkatta Tigers | 6pm.
3rd Dec, Monday
Mumbai Champs vs Chennai Superstars | 12.30pm.
5th Dec, Wednesday
Hyderabad Heroes vs Chandigrah Lions | 6pm.
7th Dec, Friday
Mumbai Champs vs Delhi Jets | 6pm.
8th Dec, Saturday
Chennai Superstars vs Chandigrah Lions | 12.30pm.
Delhi Jets vs Kolkatta Tigers | 6pm.
9th Dec, Sunday
Hyderabad Heroes vs Chennai Superstars | 12.30pm.
Mumbai Champs vs Chandigrah Lions | 6pm.
10th Dec, Monday
Mumbai Champs vs Kolkatta Tigers | 6pm.
12th Dec, wednesday
Chennai Superstars vs Delhi Jets | 12.30pm
Hyderabad Heroes vs Kolkatta Tigers | 6pm.
14th Dec, Friday
Semi-final 1 (fourth vs first in group) | 12.30pm.
15th Dec, Saturday
For 5th & 6th place | 12.30pm
Semi-final 2 (second vs third in group) | 6pm.
16th Dec, Sunday
For 3rd and 4th position | 12.30pm.
Grand ICL 2007 final | 6pm.

Live telecast
Zeesports will show the 2007 Indian cricket league in India. no confusion into that but sadly - I've not heard any news of the coverage going out of India like Singapore, Middle East or USA or England. But, in case you have any of Zee channels at home - try'em. Zee group have announced to show first 30 mins of every match on all channels run by Zee.. like Zee Cinema, Zee TV, Zee Music and so forth!

The Commentators
This is important. and pleasing that Zeesports have compiled a famous, experienced and smart commentary panel to go in with International level telecast of the tournament. Television commentators like Dean Jones, Pat Symcox are my favourite cricket commentators whereas Tony Greig has poured his distinguish voice all around my head over the years. It will be fun to listen to Jeffery Thomson and Mike Whitney for the first time but in all - good set of people to teach cricket to Indian fans.

hopefully/obviously - those irritating advertisements will be few for ICL 2007 telecast.

Squads
There are 6 teams for the 2007 edition of Indian cricket league. mainly selected from all 6 major cities, most new names come from those cities which are added with International cricketers from some specific country. thus - each squad in ICL 2007 below has some specific flavor to it.

Chennai Superstars
There's an Aussie look to this Chennai team captained by Stuart Law and coached by Micheal Bevan - who's just starting his new job of managing cricket teams and making strategies. The jersey color? purple shirt of green collars!

Internationals : Stuart Law (Captain, Australia), Chris Read (Wicketkeeper, England), Hemang Badani (India), Ian Harvey (Australia), Russel Arnold (Srilanka), Shabbir Ahmed (Pakistan), Sridharan Sriram (India), Thiru Kumaran (India).
New Names : G Vignesh, Hemanth Kumar, J Hareish, P. Vivek, R Jesuraj, R Sathish, Sanjeev Martin, Syed Mohammad, Tamil Kumaran, V Devendran, Vasanth Sarvanan

Chandigrah Lions
The Blue boys are coached by Balwinder Singh Sandhu - a rare turban fast/swing bowler for India who represented in 1983 world cup win. Captain of this team of Lions is Kiwi six smasher Chris Cairns who, interestingly, never captained the his own New Zealand side.

Internationals : Chris Cairns (captain, Newzealand), Andrew Hall (RSA allrounder), Darell Tuffy (NZ fast bowler) , Hamish Marshall (Curly hair Kiwi batsman), Dinesh Mongia (India), Reetinder Singh Sodhi (India) & Imran Farhat (Pakistan).
New Names : Amit Uniyal, Bipul Sharma, Chetan Sharma, Gaurav Gupta, Harpreet Singh, Ishan Malhotra, Karanveer Singh, Love Albish, Manish Sharma, Rajesh Sharma, Sabarjeet Singh (wicket-keeper), Sumit Kalia, TP Singh.

Delhi Jets
Marvan Atapattu has said no to Srilankan board & together with coach Madan Lal, he'll look to propel Delhi Jets team in blue collar & cream shirt. They play the inaugural match of this Indian cricket league 2007.

Internationals : Marvan Atapattu (Srilanka), Dale Benkenstien (South Africa), JP Yadav (India), Paul Nixon (old-but-fighter of wicketkeeper from England), Taufiq Umar (Pakistan), Niall O'Brien (Ireland).
New Names : Abbas Ali, Abhinav Bali, Abhishek Sharma, Abhishek Tamrakar, Abid Nabi Ahanger, Ali Murtaza, Dhruv Mahajan, Dishant Yagnik, Mohnish Mishra, Raghav Sachdev, Sachin Dholpure, Shalabh Srivastav, T. Sudindra, Yashpal Singh.

Hydeabad Heros
Pakistani flavor to this Hyderabad Heros team is brought by captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and coach Moin Khan. so, one thing is for certain - expect not only the biryani's but also some passionate cricket.

Internationals : Inzamam-ul-Haq (Captain, Pakistan), Abdul Razzaq (Pakistan), Azhar Mehmood (Pakistan), Chris Harris (New Zealand) & Nicky Boje (South Africa).
New Names : Alfered Absolom, Ambati Rayudu, Anirudh Singh, Baburao Ydav, Bheema Rao, Ibrahim Khaleel (wicket-keeper), Inder Shekar Reddy, Kaushik Reddy, PS Niranjan, Shashank Nag, Stuart Binny, Syed Shahbuddin, Vinay Kumar, Zakharia Zuffri.

Kolkatta Tigers
This ICL team have Kiwi-Proteas flavor mixed with Bengal spice. made up of boys from Kolkatta, former International cricketers from European nation make this bunch of boys very competitive. Led by Criag McMillan and coached by my one time favorite batsman - Daryll Cullinan of South Africa.

Internationals : Crag McMillan (New Zealand), Boyd Rankin (Ireland), Darren Maddy (England), Deep Das Gupta (wicketkeeper, India), Lance Klusner (South Africa), Nantie Hayward, Rohan Gawaskar (India), Upul Chandana (Srilanka).
New Names : Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Abu Nechim, Ali H Zaidi, Anshu Jain, Mihir Diwakar, Praviz Aziz, Pritam Das,Rajiv Kumar, Sayed Akhlakh Ahmed, Shiv Sagar Singh, Subhiomoy Das and Sujay Tarafder.

Mumbai Champs : is coached by Sandeep Patil who himself was very close to coaching Indian cricket team. Means - expect some fighting matches from these boys although the International names aren't too many but three batsman to watch out for in Indian cricket league this year are here. Orange is their jersey color.

Internationals : Brain Lara (captain, West Indies), Nathan Astle (New Zealand), Johan van der Wath, Mervin Dillon (West Indies), Vikram Solanki (England).
New Names : Anupam Sanklecha, Dheeraj Jadhav, Kiran Powar, Nikhil Mandale, Pushkar Joshi, Rakesh Patel, Ranjeet Kirid, Raviraj Patil, Robin Morris, Shreyas Khanolkar, Sridhar Iyer, Subrojit Paul (wicketkeeper) and Suyash Burkal.

Official website : the points table, the special reports and interviews and all the exclusive delails on 2007 indian cricket-league can be found at the official website of the Zeesports tournament here.

Ground : 14 kilometers off Chandigrah, near Panchkula town in Punjab is where this stadium is situated. Tau Devi Lal ground it is called and ICL authorities have installed 6 floodlights for organizing the night twent20 cricket matches. I also hear that the capacity of the ground is only 7,000 spectators at the moment (for the 2007 ICL tournament at least) but can be improved easily as the space around is in plenty!

Notes :
-No overthrow will be allowed to the batsman in case the fielders throw hit the stumps. moreover, no duckwarth lewis system will be used, neither the usual bowl-outs of 20-20 cricket. Instead, an Indian version of Jayadevan method will be on trial.
-Guess what's the total prize money of this first new cricket league in India = 4 million us dollars or around 15 crore rupees. a team that loses every match can still gain a 'not so small' amound of 85 lakh rupees.

Indian cricket league (ICL) 2007