As the Indian Premier League carnival prepares to hit the South African shores, Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has warned his players against letting the cash-rich tournament cloud their minds during the ODI series against the Proteas here.
Australia and South Africa play a five-match ODI series starting today till April 17 and the IPL starts April 18.
Ponting said any player who gets distracted by the IPL would not be able to do well.
“I’d like to think that the guys have solely got their minds on what they need to have their minds on for the next couple of weeks,” said the skipper.
“The IPL will start up once our tournament is over. Whenever you are representing Australia, if you have a clouded mind on anything at all then you are not going to play your best cricket. I haven’t heard that around the group, any talk about the IPL whatsoever.
“We know that we’ve got a lot of guys coming out from Australia who will be arriving in South Africa very soon to start their preparations for the IPL. The moment I hear any of that stuff creeping in, it will be addressed,” he added.
Defending champions Rajasthan Royals will be the first to land here and based in Cape Town from next week.
Source – cricketnext.in.com
Former Australian Test paceman Glenn McGrath says he’s happy with his fitness as he embarks on a heavy schedule before his first major cricket match in almost a year.
McGrath leaves for a 12-day training camp in India on Saturday in preparation for more than a month of Twenty20 matches in the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches.
However, the actual tournament has been shifted from India to South Africa due to security concerns.
Retiring from international cricket after the 2007 World Cup final, McGrath played in the initial IPL last year.
He now spends most of his time working with the McGrath Foundation breast cancer charity and raising his two children after losing his wife to the disease in last June.
But he said he was prepared for the upcoming schedule with the Delhi Daredevils.
“I’ve been pretty busy of late,” McGrath told reporters at a McGrath Foundation charity launch at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday.
“I head off tomorrow, heading to India first for a few days before heading over to South Africa, so it’s been a busy last few weeks but it’s all come together well.”
He said the IPL had changed the nature of world cricket.
“I think it probably has, hopefully for the better,” he said.
“As a player, it’s good to go over there.
“Twenty20 is quite a fast, exciting game and also I think the big selling point for me as well was that I get to play with guys that I don’t (normally) get to play with.
“And you get to see how they play, how they prepare.
“We become pretty good friends when we play against each other, but then we play with each other, it’s different again and that’s what I like about the IPL.”
He said he was happy with his form after a couple of charity matches.
“In the two games I’ve had, the bushfire appeal and Jason Gillespie’s testimonial match, I’ve come out okay,” he said.
“We’ve got a 12-day training camp before the first game so I’m hoping it’ll come back quite quickly, as long as I’m reasonably fit, the bowling usually comes back quite quickly.
“At the moment my fitness is pretty good and that will hopefully just increase that over the next few weeks.”
He said the maximum four overs per bowler rule was also appealing.
“Any more than four overs and I think I’d shy away from it.”
Michael Hussey will become the latest Australian to withdraw from this year’s IPL in an effort to reinvigorate himself ahead of the Ashes. Hussey is one of only two Australians, along with Brad Haddin, to have played in all 12 Tests and 10 one-day internationals since last year’s tour of India, and was due to join the Chennai Super Kings after the limited-overs series against Pakistan next month. He is now likely to spend the time with his family in Perth.Hussey is mired in the deepest trough of his international career – he reached 50 once in the six Tests against South Africa – and is desperate to rediscover peak form in time for the Ashes. In addition to the IPL, he is also believed to be considering standing down from Australia’s six matches against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates as he seeks to rejuvenate both body and mind. He will play the one-day series in South Africa, which begins in Durban on Friday.
Hussey could have travelled to South Africa for the last fortnight of the IPL, but will instead follow the lead of his national captain, Ricky Ponting, in standing down from the tournament. Mitchell Johnson and Michael Clarke did not nominate for the 2009 IPL auction, citing their desire to focus on international cricket.
“We havent got any official intimation from Hussey yet,” VB Chandrasekhar, the Super Kings’ cricket operations director, told Cricinfo. “It’s a big disappointment for us, but we have got to respect his need to take rest. No doubt, we will miss him a lot. He was expected to play from the ninth game onwards and play a crucial role. (Andrew) Flintoff leaves by then and we thought, even if the bowling gets weakened a bit, our batting would have got stronger.”
In the IPL’s inaugural season, Hussey posted the tournament’s third highest score (116 not out) and the fourth highest batting average (84.00) in his four-game stint for the Super Kings. But he has struggled for form of late, averaging just 23.00 in eight Tests since the start of the Australian summer.
Source – content.cricinfo.com
The ‘differences’ with Kolkata Knight Riders coach John Buchanan notwithstanding, Sourav Ganguly said on Thursday that he would like to forget the past and look forward to a good show in the second season of the Indian Premier League starting in South Africa from April 18.
“It’s (the differences over captaincy issue) not a new thing in sports and I am sure it will happen in future also. It happens in a lot of teams. I think as professionals, we need to put this behind and look forward to playing in South Africa. I don’t think it will affect (the team preparation),” the former India captain said on the sidelines of a promotional event in Kolkata.
Ganguly, who led the Knight Riders last year, was miffed after Buchanan announced that the Kolkata outfit would have multiple captains in the IPL this season.
The Bengal stalwart, however, said as professionals he and his team-mates are determined to fulfil their responsibilities towards the team.
“We all are professionals and when the tournament starts we all have responsibilities. We all have reputations to keep. We know we are doing a job for Knight Riders for which everyone is looked after,” Ganguly said.
Meanwhile, in an apparent move to douse the tension within the outfit over the captaincy issue, the Knight Riders have decided to announce their skipper and squad for the cash-rich T20 tournament in South Africa.
Although, the Knight Riders management decided to dump Buchanan’s idea and stick to the “one” captain policy in a meeting at team owner Shah Rukh Khan’s residence on Tuesday, they are still tight-lipped on whether Ganguly would continue as the skipper or not.
Asked about the disappearance of Kolkata’s name from the team logo, Ganguly said, “It’s still Kolkata Knight Riders. Knight Riders is the company, it was there last year and it just disappeared perhaps because the tournament shifted to South Africa. But it will remain Kolkata Knight Riders when we return next year.”
Ganguly, who leaves for South Africa on April 5, said their base camp, Bloemfontein will help in the team’s preparation as it has the best wicket in South Africa.
“Bloemfontein is a very good place. They say Bloemfontein has the best wicket in South Africa. Everybody had their chance to select for their base camp and the reason why we chose Bloemfontein because it’s the more quieter part of South Africa.”
He further said the team’s fitness trainer Adrian Le Roux belonged to that part of the country which was one of the reason behind the decision to select Bloemfontein as the base.
“Le Roux belongs to that place so obviously he had a major say in the decision. He knows the ground condition well and will be able to help us in terms of facilities, wickets and make sure we get everything in place before the camp starts,” added Ganguly.
Source – expressindia.com
Australia skipper Ricky Ponting says there is “some merit” in Kolkata Knight Riders coach John Buchanan’s proposal to have multiple captains within the team in this month’s Indian Premier League (IPL).
Buchanan, one of cricket’s most lateral-thinking and controversial coaches, stepped down as Australia’s mentor after helping guide Ponting’s team to a successful one-day international World Cup defence in the West Indies in 2007.
Ponting had been due to play for Kolkata in the five-week IPL season, which starts on April 18. But the Australian batsman, who would be available to play in the last two weeks of the tournament, has opted to spend time at home with his family.
Australia’s busy year continues in June with the Twenty20 World Cup followed by the Ashes series in July, both in England.
Ponting will miss out on the chance to share the captaincy/”strategist” roles of the Kolkata side with other big names such as India’s Saurav Ganguly, West Indian Chris Gayle, New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum and Australia’s Brad Hodge and David Hussey.
Ganguly, who was Kolkata’s IPL captain in 2008, has spoken out against the idea and claims he wasn’t consulted, although Buchanan denies this.
“I heard the other day he was actually talking about having a couple of captains on the ground at once. I don’t know how that’s going to work,” Ponting told AAP this week.
“But I know Tassie actually experimented with that a few years ago.
“They had Dan Marsh and George Bailey. One was doing the field placings and one was doing the bowling changes.
“So it just sort of lightened the load up I guess on the actual captain on the field and gave him a bit more opportunity to think about different things.
“I don’t see there’s a lot of problems with it.
“The more experience you can get into a lot of guys as far as leadership goes can only benefit your group.
“But it seems like it’s a bit more of a sensitive situation at the moment with Sourav (Ganguly) being captain and maybe not wanting to give up that actual role, which you can understand as well.
“I think there is some merit in it. We’ll see how it works at the end of this IPL.”
After announcing his plan last month for multiple captains, Buchanan has since fine-tuned his proposal and says he wants one captain and “four to five core experts” who will act as “strategists”.
“These coaches or strategists will assist the one captain on field with their viewpoints on the game plan set earlier or shoot from the hip as the case maybe,” a Kolkata team statement said.
“The captain for the team is one and only one as in the case of most sports. Just the roles which are there in the regular format of the game as the fielding expert, batting coaches, are being better defined to be able to give quick suggestions …
“All internal decisions are taken collectively by the core cricketing team which comprises John, Sourav, Matthew Mott (assistant coach) and a few others.”
Source – news.theage.com.au
