Welcoming Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shahrukh Khan’s decision to have just one captain during the second IPL season in South Africa, former Indian skipper and coach Ajit Wadekar said better sense has prevailed in KKR camp at last.

“I am happy that better sense has prevailed in KKR camp and the owner of the team and film star Shahrukh Khan’s decision to have just one captain and Kiwi stumper Brendon McCullum as his deputy for the second IPL is a welcome sign,” Wadekar told Cricketnext.com here on Wednesday.

“I admire the way the Aussies play any sport. They just don’t like to lose and posses the best killer’s instinct. They are also the best finishers of a cricket match and that is the reason they are still at the top of the heap.

“They have produced some high quality cricketers and continue to do. But some times there coaching tactics are beyond anybodies’ imagination and may not work to the best interest of the team,” he added.

“I should say that Khan’s timely intervention has saved the team from a real disaster. Like in the Bollywood movies, he (Shahrukh Khan) has arrived at the right time to save the team from a certain disaster. John Buchanan’s multiple-captains theory would certainly not have worked for KKR,” Wadekar pointed out.

“Not just in cricket, but in any sport this theory would not have worked. I also strongly feel that Sourav Ganguly is the right choice to lead the team at least for this season. Sourav, Rahul (Dravid) and V V S Laxman have a lot to offer even in the shortest version of the game and it will be a mistake to dismantle them at this point of time,” he added.

Source – cricketnext.in.com

As owner of the IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders Shahrukh Khan has moved heaven and earth to promote the team. And it stands to reason; with the Second season of the Indian Premier League moved out of the country, the teams could use all the extra publicity they can get.

But according to Shahrukh his purpose behind appointing cheerleaders is not only to publicise his team. He firmly believes that with some consideration and planning, cheerleading can be developed as a sport in itself; cheerleading has all the characteristics of a good sport: it demands immense physical fitness, flexibility and concentration, and the levels of competition can get intense too. He believes that there is no reason to undermine this activity. It is well known that in America, a game is never complete without a cheerleading routine. Cheerleading there is a full-fledged sport and comes with a huge fan following. It’s more than just a routine; it’s a competition in itself. Moreover cheerleaders are instrumental in grabbing the audience’s attention to the game and inciting participation. In a short, action packed sport like Twenty20 cricket the cheerleaders will be perfect to keep the adrenalin levels up.
In the first season of the Indian Premier League, cheerleaders served to bring colour, opulence and glitz to the games. But the concept faced flak from most traditionalists who labelled it as vulgar, indecent and as going against the sentiments of the nation. Then how is it that it will be any different this time? But Shahrukh Khan insists that if developed ethically sensibly and tastefully cheerleading can open up whole new avenues and opportunities for the youth.

The King Khan will personally choose the cheerleading team through a television show called ‘Knights and Angels’. Produced by Shahrukh’s Red Chillies Entertainment, it is India’s first ever reality talent hunt show for cheerleaders. From the proceeds of the show he will select six cheerleaders who will travel to South Africa for the upcoming matches. He believes that his show will bring propriety to cheerleading as a profession.
Source – cricket360.com

Five leading Pakistani cricketers, who were dumped by the IPL, are planning to file a case in an Indian court against the IPL bosses and franchises for canceling their contracts prematurely and not clearing their dues for the term of their three-year contracts.

Pakistan captain Younis Khan, Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi, Salman Butt and Shoaib Akhtar, who all played in the inaugural IPL tournament, have asked an agent to go to Mumbai and file the damages suit there in the High Court.

“The agent represents Mohammad Asif and now he has also been approached by these players to help them file a case against the IPL in Indian court,” a Jang report said on Thursday.

The players feel the IPL wrongly terminated their three-year contracts after the Pakistan government did not allow these players to go to India because of the strained political relations between the two countries.

The IPL has now been shifted to South Africa for security reasons and the players want the IPL to either allow them to play in the IPL in South Africa or compensate them fully for their three year contracts or revive them.
Source – cricketnext.in.com

We are all aware by now that a strong fan base is the lifeblood of the Indian Premier League. We know that without its multitude of ardent fans the IPL will be reduced to dust. So perhaps the biggest blow to the second season of IPL was that it was moved out of India, a country which has more than a fair share of cricket-crazy fans who are ready to drop everything for a cricket match.

Whereas the fan-following in India ensured that no organiser would ever have to worry about stadiums running empty, South Africa has suddenly posed a new worry. Will the forthcoming matches be able to generate enough crowds to keep the stadium alive? Indian Premier League’s publicist Percy Dubash believes that they will.
Places like Durban and Pretoria have a strong Asian and NRI population. In fact IPL franchises are already looking to use the strong Asian fan base in these areas to their advantage. In addition South Africa is a popular tourist destination, and with the matches coinciding with the summer vacations in India, Dubash is confident that the tournament will bring in Indians in large numbers. And one must not forget that South Africa itself is a cricket loving nation.

On the other hand, there are many who don’t sound as optimistic as Dubash. Arthur Turner, a former cricket administrator believes that the most the IPL can do in South Africa is serve as a television product. He says “It is hard to see how eight foreign teams playing 59 matches in a foreign country will capture the imagination of the South African public. Sure there will be a curiosity factor but nothing more.” According to him Durban, due to a fairly large Indian population, might be the only place where the IPL can look for live support.

So far the IPL franchises have done everything they could to build a fan-following: cheerleaders, exclusive apparel, computer games, online cricket blogs and the works. But only when the matches begin will they know whether moving the IPL to South Africa was a financially viable idea or not.
Source – cricket360.com

First came the multimillion-pound player auction. Next were the cheerleaders and their miniskirts. The latest evolution in cricket to be hatched by the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a five-minute “strategy break” in the middle of each innings, to boost television advertising revenues.

The IPL’s quickfire Twenty20 format, designed to wrap up a match in the time it takes to watch a Bollywood film, has already been derided by the game’s purists. Their likely reaction to the latest rule change is easy to forecast.

However, the IPL’s organisers, who are planning to introduce the intervals when the tournament starts later this month, admit privately that they cannot afford to care about the reproach of old-school followers.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which runs the IPL, is under immense pressure to boost earnings after the competition was forced to move from India to South Africa because of security concerns. Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, has admitted that the shift in venue will wipe out the IPL’s profits, which had been expected to reach £100 million this year. It is estimated that the introduction of a five-minute advertising break after ten overs would boost the advertising revenues yielded by each IPL game by as much as 30 per cent. The rejigging of the format is thought to have been key in securing a new £1.1 billion broadcasting deal between the BCCI, the IPL owners and Multi Screen Media. Advertising is the IPL’s main source of revenue.

On the pitch, five minutes of uninterrupted thinking time for the team captains could conceivably change the dynamics of the IPL, a competition still in its infancy as far as strategies and tactics are concerned. At present there is an interval of 15 minutes between the innings.

More than anything, however, the new advertising intervals will underscore how swiftly cricket, until recently a commercial laggard, has been transformed under the watch of its Indian custodians.

Before last year’s inaugural competition, the BCCI boasted that more than 200 variations had been tested before the “optimum commercial and investment model” for the IPL was hit upon.

The generation of cash is more important than ever in the wake of the expensive shift to South Africa, BCCI officials say. IPL team owners include Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man – an industrial mogul not known for backing underperforming assets. Another team owner, Shah Ruck Khan, Bollywood’s most bankable star, is rich – but not so rich he can afford to forgo returns. “The owners must make money,” Dr Jitendra Singh, the dean of Nanyang Business School in Singapore and an expert on the business of cricket, said. “They will turn the screws on the [IPL organisers] if the right results do not come about.”
Source – timesonline.co.uk