Endless Cricket Merry-Go-Round Continues With CLT20
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The Champions League Twenty20. We’ve reached the candyfloss stage in the cricket calendar.
Take a breath. That’s enough. We’re off again: More cricket—this time the Champions League Twenty20, or at least the qualifiers for the main event, which starts later this week in Bangalore.
Yes, the cricket merry-go-round continues, spinning as fast as ever, unconcerned that the repetitive motion is making even its most ardent fans nauseous. Round and round we go, with cricket action occasionally thrown in amongst the endless advertisements, often for yet more cricket tournaments.
The Champions League T20 has landed on our television screens hot on the heels of India’s tour of England, which only ended on Friday. Rest for India’s cricketers? Fat chance, the only way they’ll get out of this is if they’re injured. Oh, most of them are injured.
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Kolkata Knight Riders’ Jacques Kallis plays a shot during the qualifying match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Auckland Aces in Hyderabad on Monday.
The CLT20 is played between the top T20 cricket sides from different parts of the world. The best three teams in this year’s Indian Premier League—Chennai Super Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians—qualify automatically, while fourth placed Kolkata Knight Riders are in the play-offs (and on track for the CLT20 proper after beating Auckland Aces by two runs in Hyderabad last night.)
Other teams at the Champions League, which is set to be played in Chennai and Kolkata (weather permitting) as well as Bangalore, include the Warriors and Cape Cobras of South Africa, the South Australian Redbacks and 2009 CLT20 champions New South Wales Blues. In addition to Kolkata and Auckland, the teams battling it out in the qualifiers for three spots in the main tournament are Trinidad & Tobago, Ruhuna, Leicestershire and Somerset.
International stars like Chris Gayle, Graeme Smith, Daniel Vettori and Brett Lee are playing in the tournament, while homegrown stars such as Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, his teammate Suresh Raina, and Virat Kohli are also involved.
Don’t be fooled by the advertisements, Mumbai Indians skipper Sachin Tendulkar is unlikely to play because of a toe injury he aggravated during India’s disastrous tour of England. This year’s cricket calendar is too much even for the Little Master, but the powers-that-be aren’t relenting. They’ll cook this golden goose till it’s dry as a crisp.
Of course Tendulkar still features front and center of all the Champions League’s publicity drives: he is too valuable a commodity to put aside, injured or not.
According to an Indo-Asian News Service report, the first day of the CLT20 qualifiers in Hyderabad failed to attract big crowds, even though tickets were on sale for as little as 100 rupees ($2.12). The city’s Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium has a capacity for 40,000 spectators, but crowd numbers barely topped 8,000 on Monday, the report said.
It’s starting to feel like a day out at the fairground that has gone on too long. It all got off to such a nice start, with the thrilling and satisfying rollercoaster ride that was the World Cup. But it was perhaps unwise to follow all that excitement by immediately strapping in for the log flume that was the Indian Premier League. There’s only so much you can take.
That was certainly the case with India’s cricketers, who dropped like flies as injuries struck again and again during the tour of England. The Test series and subsequent One Day Internationals, as well as a T20 match, was a nightmare for India. The summer tour had promised to be another thrilling rollercoaster, but all we got in the end was one-way traffic for England. For India fans, this was the equivalent of being stuck on a terrifying haunted house ride. For the English, it was a gentle outing on the boating lake.
Rather than having a break, even a short one, the CLT20 has now arrived on our laps.
This is the candyfloss part – unwise to consume and ultimately unsatisfying, but we’ll chuck it down out throats anyway. Even the candyfloss makers know that what they’re selling isn’t healthy for the consumer, but as long as there’s a buyer, they’ll continue churning it out. Shah Rukh Khan is the top vendor this time, grinning away as he rams the product into everyone’s faces.
Immediately after the CLT20 comes another series against England, this time to be played in India. We’ll strap in again for another ride, but we really should’ve gone home hours ago. Is anyone else feeling queasy?
You can follow Mr. Davies on Twitter @WillMHDavies.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime.
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Via: India Real Time
