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Sean Morris, who took over who took over as the chief executive of the Rajasthan Royals franchise on Monday, has said he does not expect many more England players to feature in the third edition of the IPL. Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen were the two big England signings last year, joining Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore respectively for US$1.55 million each. However, conflicting schedules this year could affect the chances of newer players from England being recruited, Morris said.

Pakistan cricketers will not feature in IPL 2010 as their board has failed to obtain their visas before the deadline for confirmation of participation, the league’s commissioner, Lalit Modi, has said. The franchises will now have to look for replacements for the Pakistan players they had signed, he said.

“We have been informed by the PCB that they have not been able to obtain the visas as of now. So we are not able to extend the deadline,” Modi told the Times Now channel. “Today is the absolute deadline for confirmation of Pakistani players [to take part in the IPL]. The exchange window [ends] the day after tomorrow.

Matthew Hayden, the former Australia opener, has suggested scrapping the Champions Trophy and creating a two-month window for the IPL in order to revive spectator interest in the game.

“Playing the World Twenty20 every other year is too much,” Hayden wrote in his column in the Independent. “And why have the Champions Trophy when you’ve already got a 50-over World Cup?”

The Champions Trophy was postponed to September 2009 and shifted to South Africa after teams expressed security concerns about playing in Pakistan last year. The ICC has been trying to rebrand the tournament as a short two-week elite tournament played at just two venues – Wanderers and Johannesburg.

IPL chairman Lalit Modi has said the BCCI never asked the ICC to create a window for both the IPL and the Champions League. “We have never propagated that we should be part of the Future Tours Programme [FTP] for the IPL or the Champions League because I think there is a natural window for these two events,” he said in London. “We never asked for one and we are never going to ask for one.”

His statement comes in the wake of ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat’s contradiction to Modi’s earlier claims that the Champions League had been slotted into the FTP.

Match facts
May 24, 2009
Start time 16.30 local, (14:30 GMT)

Big Picture

And so, as a blockbuster second season of the IPL reaches its summit, two of its biggest success stories clash in the finale in Johannesburg. They also happen to be the two most unlikely sides given how they fared in 2008. Deccan Chargers and Royal Challengers Bangalore were the two bottom-placed teams then, now they’ve busted out of the basement and made the house their own.

Clive Lloyd has expressed disappointment and concern over the IPL’s impact on the West Indian team, fearing another poor showing against England in Durham could erode the foundations laid by Chris Gayle’s men over the past 18 months. Lloyd, the former West Indian captain and current chairman of the ICC’s cricket committee, said the arrival of Gayle from the IPL less than two days before the Lord’s Test had set a bad example for the rest of the Windies players, and the absence of Dwayne Bravo was being sorely felt.

Rajasthan Royals and Middlesex, the IPL and English Twenty20 champions respectively, will face off for the British Asian Cup on July 6 at Lord’s in what will be the first of an annual charity series to be played between the Twenty20 champions of the two countries. From next year the fixture will be played as a best-of-three series.

The two teams would have originally met in the Champions League scheduled for October 2008 but that was called off because of security concerns in India. A portion of the proceeds from the game will go to the British Asian Trust, a Prince of Wales charity.

Indian sports minister MS Gill has censured the use of a text-messaging competition during the IPL whereby users predict the number of runs per over for cash prizes, terming it akin to betting and gambling which are banned in India. Gill criticised the Indian board (BCCI) for allowing the SMS competition to go on and asked them to restrain the IPL authorities.

“I see the commercial use of cricket for business gains that is going on. I am concerned at knowledgeable comments from serious followers of cricket about the latest venture of encouraging viewers to make ball-by-ball predictions of runs scored for economic gain in the shape of cash prizes,” Gill said.

Shane Watson has said he is not in doubt for next month’s World Twenty20 despite a groin injury ruling him out of the final two weeks of the IPL. Watson was one of three players Cricket Australia prevented from attending the tournament in South Africa on medical grounds and he arrived home with the limited-overs squad on Saturday.

Shane Watson, Nathan Bracken and James Hopes will not contest Cricket Australia’s move to stand them down from the IPL, despite being left disappointed and out of pocket by the decision. The trio had hoped to join Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab respectively from this weekend, only to be ruled out after undergoing medical examinations by Australian team doctor, Trefor James.