India set to let stars play in the Hundred
INDIA’s top cricketers might be given the opportunity to play in the Hundred tournament, which starts in England in 2020.
India’s all-powerful cricket authority, the BCCI, which bans its players from overseas T20 tournaments to protect their market-leading Indian Premier League, are understood to be considering making an exception for the Hundred because it is played over 100 balls compared to 120.
Having Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and other top Indians playing would be an immense boost for the Hundred in its inaugural year, especially when England’s Test players will not be involved. It would also be a helpful bargaining chip for future negotiations around an IPL franchise in London.
The BCCI have already given permission for their women cricketers to take part in the Kia Super League T20 in England this summer.
Cricket Writers on TV is the latest casualty of Sky Sports’ cost-cutting due to the huge expense of keeping their flagship Premier League coverage. Bizarrely, Sky partly blame the programme’s demise on mediocre presenter Paul Allott leaving to become Lancashire director of cricket. Ironically, in the light of cricket coverage suffering because of the cost of Premier League football, its executive chairman Richard Scudamore was a guest of the ECB at Lord’s yesterday. SUCH are the conflicting messages emanating from the ECB about the poorly-planned Hundred competition — from inept chairman Colin Graves’s (right) ‘set in stone’ to CEO Tom Harrison’s ‘just a concept’ — no wonder rights holders BBC were still describing it as the new T20 competition in a press release yesterday. Meanwhile, BBC’s Test Match Special seem obsessed with turning ordinary commentator Daniel Norcross into the next Henry Blofeld. So much so that TMS’s Twitter account went to the lengths of asking for tweets about Norcross’s colourful Blofeldesque shirt yesterday.
problem for property developer Charles Rifkind’s ambitious scheme to sell off £500 parcels of land in the tunnels he owns under the Nursery End at Lord’s is that your average MCC member does not understand cryptocurrency or blockchain technology.