Shah Rukh Khan’s IPL team’s experiment will be watched keenly. Kolkata Knight Riders’ coach John Buchanan and its icon player Sourav Ganguly sprang a surprise on the cricket world by announcing that the team will have a pool of captains who could turns at leading the team at different stages of a match during the ensuing DLF-IPL tournament in South Africa.

“We’re looking at knowledge of individuals at different stages of the game. The idea is to have somebody to have a better view of the game irrespective of whether he’s in the middle or off the field,” Buchanan said in Kolkata, sparking off a great debate in cricket circles. He suggested that in this format of the game there is little scope for thinking.

Last year, the DLF-IPL tournament showed that T20 was not just slam-bang cricket. On the contrary, it challenged the best cricketers to be on their toes and think on their feet. Buchanan has surely added a new dimension to it now but, as Ganguly says, we will all have to wait and see how the experiment pans out.

Traditionally, it has been believed that too many captains on the field can lead to chaos. At the moment, we can only envisage that the adaptability of KKR players – and, for good measure, the pool of captains – will come under test.

Come to think of it, the opposing teams will also wonder during a game which of the KKR men on the field is doing the leading. After all, every captain has a different approach to the task of leadership and the rival teams would have to make different plans to take on the KKR combination under different skippers.

Buchanan has not articulated his thoughts on how exactly he plans to roll this idea out. “The concept of multiple captains is new, we’ll have to see how it goes,” he said. “I’m clear about my concept. We have to look and see how it works out.”

You can be sure there will be a lot of people waiting to see how it goes.
Source – khabrein.info

Local cricket bosses are excited about hosting Indian Premier League matches and do not foresee problems in extending the local season into late May.

One of the key reasons England lost out in the relocation of the event was the weather, with rain in April and May likely to have bedevilled the programme at English grounds.

“Getting the IPL here is great news for us, and it is a big endorsement for our administrators,” said Western Province Cricket Association chief executive Andre Odendaal.
Newlands is one of six venues likely to be used during the 59-game tournament, with the opening ceremony and first game (on April 18) set for the famous city ground.

“It is great to be able to give our loyal fans some more cricket, especially with the field in superb condition,” added Odendaal. “We hosted a Test against New Zealand from May 1-5 in 2007, which produced lots of runs. So we are not foreseeing any problems in having seven good 20-overs pitches.”

IPL commissioner Lalit Modi said on Tuesday that the eight city-based franchises would not be based in specific cities in South Africa, but would play around the country.

While the IPL and Cricket South Africa will be burning the midnight oil to produce a schedule for the 59 matches of the tournament in the next couple of days, early reports have suggested the cities which will host matches are Cape Town, Johannesburg, Centurion, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.

If only six South African grounds are used, they would all host either nine or 10 first-round matches, with semifinals and a final to follow. As South Africa’s biggest ground, the Wanderers should get the final.Hosting the IPL will mean a shortened off-season period for locals. The tournament, starting on April 18, will last five weeks, and South Africa will also be hosting the ICC Champions Trophy in September.

Neither the IPL nor the ICC will accept matches in premier competitions being hosted at small venues in the country. They will want the Wanderers, Newlands, Kingsmead, St George’s Park and SuperSport Park in Centurion to stage matches in two such important events.

Over the last few seasons, though, there have been numerous complaints from the Proteas and domestic players about the standard of South African pitches. Allowing the various groundsmen time to get the venues into shape is crucial, but that won’t happen given the much shortened off-season.

Although CSA chief executive Gerald Majola did not seem perturbed about over-use of grounds, some senior CSA officials are believed to be extremely concerned about the number of matches South Africa will be hosting in the coming weeks and months.

“Maybe all that money they are making can be put to use to make sure the grounds are properly ready for next season,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

CSA are expected to make in the region of R90-million for hosting the IPL. That money will be paid as a flat rate and the IPL will basically run the event in the stadiums.

Modi did say on Tuesday that his organisation was negotiating with South African companies to allow them to come on board for this season’s competition as sponsors, but, for the rest, the money made inside the stadiums through the sale of merchandise and suites would go to the IPL.

The second edition of the IPL tournament, which features day/night matches between eight franchise teams backed by wealthy businessmen and Bollywood stars, had to leave its homeland after the Indian Government said a clash of dates with the upcoming general election meant they could not provide the required security.
Source – iol.co.za

Australian cricket great Shane Warne thinks it’s a shame his Rajasthan Royals won’t get a chance to defend their Indian Premier League title on home soil.

A year after retiring from international cricket, Warne was captain and coach of the Jaipur-based Royals franchise that won the inaugural IPL, a Twenty20 tournament that attracts the world’s leading players on lucrative contracts and is run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The 2009 IPL season was shifted to South Africa and delayed by a week because the tournament dates – originally April 10 to May 24 – clashed with general elections in India, causing concerns that security forces would be too stretched to adequately cover matches and polling booths.

“To win it on the last ball last year as the underdogs, having been thrashed in our first game, was pretty special in front of 80 000 people,” Warne told reporters on Thursday. “It won’t be the same as it being in India, but hopefully the South African public will get behind it and turn up to the ground and make it a great spectacle.”The Royals captain said much of the planning for the season had to be quickly overhauled, with the eight-team league now playing in unfamiliar territory.

“We’ve done three months of planning about itineraries and practice matches and all sorts of things. We were all set to go,” Warne said.

“We started planning for England over the weekend and now we’re planning for South Africa as of yesterday.”

Warne said the Rajasthan Royals would play some practice matches in Cape Town before the league to get used to the conditions.

And while he doubted that number of fans that the first IPL season attracted in India would be repeated, Warne said he was anticipating good support in South Africa.
“South Africa loves sport, they’re very passionate about their sport. Hopefully they get some good crowds… (But) it’ll be nothing like if it was in India, and it’s a shame it can’t be in India.”

The 39-year-old Warne, who was the leading bowler in Test cricket when he retired in 2007, said security was paramount and the players and staff would just have to deal with the tournament’s decision to move, confirmed by IPL commissioner Lalit Modi earlier this week.

“Its just difficult,” he said. “It’s out of our hands. It’s up to Lalit Modi and all of his team to decide what to do.

“It is a shame we’re not in India, it would have been nice to be there.”
Source – iol.co.za

Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who co-owns Indian Premier League (IPL) team Rajasthan Royals, hopes that the new venue for the matches will be a success for the T20 series.

“Kudos to the South African government and South Africa cricket body who have welcomed us with open arms and I am really hopeful after attending the Australia vs South Africa Pro T20 Match on Friday, seeing the huge cricket fan base there, I am sure that the IPL will be hugely successful,” Shilpa posted on her blog on board a flight to Cape Town.

The second edition of IPL is taking place in South Africa. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) decided to shift the Twenty20 tournament outside the country after state governments failed to assure security for the event that clashed with general elections.

Last year’s winning team, Rajasthan Royals will kick off the series with a match against Bangalore Royal Challengers at Newlands, Cape Town April 18 and the 33-year-old actress also admitted to undergoing pressure to maintain the winning streak.

“The pressure is really on, especially for us but I feel Rajasthan Royals have an edge since three of our players belong to the South African team, namely South Africa captain Graeme Smith, Morne Morkel and Tyron Henderson,” she wrote.

Source – movies.ndtv.com