There’s Only One ‘F’ in Foley
THE Caribbean Premier League, established in 2013, is played in the T20 format with a spin-off T10 ‘6ixty’ competition.
An acknowledged draw for the world’s top players, proven run getters such as Ravi Rampaul, Shoaib Malik, Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Smith and Evin Lewis will be taking part this year.
The six-team T20 tournament begins on August 31, each team playing 10 games, before semi-finals and a September 30 final in Guyana.
The 6ixty will be held as a warm-up later this month, August 24-28. Format tweaks include teams being all out after six wickets, five consecutive overs being bowled from each end, penalties for not completing the bowling in 45 minutes and bonuses for sixes in power-plays.
A women’s tournament also been scheduled to be held concurrently with the men’s tournament.
A SUNNY day, a top-class India squad on the hob at Malahide and a chance to experience the Bharat Army first-hand — what could go wrong!
Sure enough, one of the world’s finest sets of travelling supporters rolled into Dublin and cheered every stroke and wicket played in front of estimated 80m TV viewers back on the Indian sub-continent.
Some spotty rain saw the match finish late, Ireland had been well beaten, but youngster Harry Tector had smashed 64 runs off 33 balls, way more than half of Ireland’s total of 108 from the drizzle-reduced 12 overs.
With a deadline to meet there was just time to check what India captain Hardik Pandya might have to say.
The tall, lean, charismatic Pandya wears a diamond ear stud and has cumulus-white teeth, part of a huge smile.
He retains film star status in his homeland and, indeed, is married to Bollywood star Nataša Stankovic.
The ensuing tale of
the tape for the large travelling Indian press corps was pretty mechanical, about their batting and bowling and rolling over small-fry before the skipper shaped to leave.
I managed an embarrassing preamble about how Ireland would love to have a player in the mega-bucks Indian Premier League, and not realising I was live on India TV, plugged for a nice word about Tector.