Andrew Flintoff intends to become England’s spy to aid their ICC World Twenty20 campaign when he embarks on his lucrative Indian Premier League adventure next week.

Flintoff has signed up for a two-week stint with the Chennai Super Kings and will earn $1.5m (£1m) on a pro-rata basis depending on the number of matches he plays in the tournament in South Africa. He believes the IPL will be the perfect stage to help him reach his peak this summer – and also provide him with the opportunity of spying on opposition players.

“It’s been frustrating with [injuries] and I think the IPL will be good for me,” said Flintoff. “I know I’m only bowling four overs a game, but it will give me a chance to work on my game in between games going into a Test series.”

Flintoff will get to mingle with players like Australia’s Matthew Hayden, India captain MS Dhoni, New Zealand all-rounder Jacob Oram and Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan at Chennai.

“The Twenty20 World Cup is going to be huge,” said Flintoff. “I’ll be watching the likes of Dhoni, who has played a lot of it, and Hayden who had a good IPL last year. I will be speaking to a few of the Indian guys and see if I can pick their brains. You’ll find players helping each other out.”

Flintoff opens his IPL career against Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians in Cape Town on 18 April before facing England team-mate Kevin Pietersen’s Bangalore Royal Challengers in Port Elizabeth two days later.

On his busy summer ahead, Flintoff added: “It is a long schedule and everyone is looking forward to the Ashes and making sure everyone is fit for that but I’ve stressed all along that we have to perform in all the games we’re playing.”

*South Africa crushed Australia by seven wickets to level the one-day international series at 1-1 yesterday. Australia batted poorly with the Proteas’ 19-year-old bowler Wayne Parnell claiming career-best figures of 4 for 25 to help bundle the tourists out for 131. Graeme Smith (40) and Jacques Kallis (31) posted a second-wicket stand of 69 but it was left to AB de Villiers to steer the hosts home with an unbeaten 36.
Source – independent.co.uk

England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff has said that he will not allow the Indian Premier League (IPL) to compromise his dream of recapturing the Ashes from the Australians.

Having helped England to a 3-2 one-day series win over West Indies, Flintoff is expected to pocket around 75,000 pounds a game for the Chennai Super Kings. He told SunSport: “I’d be lying if I said the money wasn’t appealing, but from a playing perspective the standard looks excellent. For me it’s a perfect start to the summer, with some short but high class warm weather cricket.””Test cricket is still the ultimate and as professionals we have to be able to switch between the different forms of the game,” Flintoffaid, adding: “I want to experience the high of winning the 2005 Ashes again, and definitely not the whitewash of 2006/07.”The Ashes will be huge, but there is so much cricket before then we have to stay focused on the job in hand,” he said.
Source – newstrackindia.com

MIKE Hussey has joined the list of Australian players to withdraw from this month’s Indian Premier League tournament, preferring to spend time at home with his family ahead of the Ashes tour in July.

Hussey said yesterday he had negotiated with his IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings to skip the five-week tournament starting on April 18.

Australia’s selectors may also decided to rest the 33-year-old batsman — who has averaged only 23 in his past eight Tests this summer — from the one-day international series against Pakistan in Dubai starting later this month.

Australia’s ODI series against South Africa was due to start in Durban late last night, Melbourne time, and finishes on April 17, followed by the Pakistan series.

“I just spoke to the franchise and asked for the time off to be with family as my playing schedule has been very busy and they were very understanding,” Hussey said. “But I am available if we make the semi-finals (on May 22 and 23) and final.”

Captain Ricky Ponting, vice-captain Michael Clarke and pace spearhead Mitch Johnson are also not playing in this year’s IPL, which has been shifted from India to South Africa for security reasons.

Cricket Australia’s selectors are set to announce a squad next week for the one-day series against Pakistan. It’s understood selectors will take into account the virtual back-to-back nature of Australia’s playing schedule this year in selecting the squad for the Pakistan series.

Australia’s commitments include the Twenty20 World Cup in England in June, followed by the Ashes and seven ODI matches against England, the Champions Trophy in South Africa, the Twenty20 Champions League in India involving NSW and Victoria, a seven-match ODI series against India and a home summer starting in November against West Indies and Pakistan.
Source – theage.com.au

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

Players from Chennai Super Kings who are not doing the national duty in New Zealand have started training in right earnest to prepare for a grueling second season of the IPL in Chennai. The players who have attended the training camp include Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel, Joginder Sharma, Manpreet Gony, Sudip Tyagi, Shadab Jakati and S. Anirudha. For a change Venkatesh Prasad has also moved from Bangalore Royal Challengers to Chennai Super Kings to be the bowling coach of the team. One wonders whether MS Dhoni had a role to play in moving Prasad from Bangalore to Chennai. The CSK team is leaving for South Africa on 8 April and would spend around 10 days to get them acclimatized with the bouncy wickets of South Africa. The key batsman for CSK would be Suresh Raina who must be brimming with confidence after the fantastic season that he had in the land of black caps. He is hopeful that the IPL Season 2 would provide the perfect opportunity to the players to prepare for the ensuing Twenty 20 World Cup.
CSK has been rather fortunate that they have been able to get Durban as their base for the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Durban is a city that has largest concentration of the expat Indian population and the ten days that CSK spends there may help them in creating a fan following for them. Most of the franchisees were vying amongst each other for Durban as a base for preparation for IPL Season 2, but the authorities of CSK were first off the block to initiate the dialogues with Cricket South Africa (CSA) and IPL authorities to ensure that they get Durban as their base. CSK may play a couple of practice matches and CSA has ensured that it would give full cooperation. CSK will play their first IPL Season 2 game against Mumbai Indians in Cape Town.
Source – cricket360.com