English counties defy Modi’s dictat

County teams include several ICL players for the Twenty20 Champions League, to be held in September-October this year

MUMBAI: With the Indian Cricket League (ICL) planning to include a few more foreign players for the next edition of the Twenty20 tournament, it seems there will be a lot of hue and cry when the English counties choose their squads for the Champions League T20 meet later this year.

“New foreign recruits will surely come in but the players will be decided after gauging the strengths and weaknesses of our teams,” an ICL source said on Tuesday.

The English counties are determined to make strong teams and are open to include players from the ICL, defying BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi’s warning that ICL players should be disqualified from the
elite league.

According to agency reports from London, a spokesman of Lancashire, which has an ICL player, New Zealand’s Lou Vincent in their ranks, said in the absence of any clear instructions from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the position was quite unclear.

“If it is up to Cricket Australia (CA) to come up with rules and regs, then maybe they would like to get a wiggle on because this thing is about to start,” he was quoted as saying by a British daily. “Our priority is winning the Twenty20 Cup, which means picking our strongest team, including ICL players.”

“If we get to the final, it will be up to the tournament organisers whether we play in the Champions League. If they do not want to see Andrew Flintoff and James Anderson out there, that is up to them,” he added.

Earlier, Indian Premier League commissioner and chairman Lalit Modi had warned that teams with ICL players in their ranks will not be allowed to play in the Champions League.

Modi’s warning has created a dilemma of sorts in county cricket, which features more than 20 players who have taken part in the ICL,
including South Africa’s Justin Kemp (Kent), Zimbabwe’s Murray Goodwin (Sussex), New Zealand’s Andre Adams (Nottinghamshire), Dale Benkenstein (Durham) and Australia’s Stuart Law (Lancashire).

Meanwhile, England cricketers are set for a cash bonanza after plans for them to play in a series of lucrative matches in the Caribbean took a significant step closer on Tuesday.

The ECB announced it would be holding a news conference with Allen Stanford, the Texan-born billionaire backer of the West Indies domestic Twenty20 competition, at Lord’s on Wednesday.

The Stanford competition is believed to be most lucrative of all Twenty20 competitions.