Ahead of this Indian Premier League Season, Buchanan, with his multiple captain theory proved that quantity rather than quality features more prominently in his cricket dictionary. Now in the middle of the league and with KKR lagging behind all other IPL teams, Buchanan has once again proved his obsession with numbers. His latest doctrine is: add to the number of foreign players in the team and pull up the team to the top of the point table. Just a couple of days ago he told the cricket news media that he was planning to approach the IPL administration to allow  more than four foreign cricketers to take part in playing eleven in the Indian Premier League. However, the celebrated coach latter admitted that his suggestion did not actually make the IPL officials very excited.

A section of Indian cricket fraternity however maintains that presently, Buchanan’s suggestion’s finding no favor with IPL at the moment does not mean that it will not be given a more serious consideration latter. Today it came from Buchanan, whose pride has been badly hurt after his team’s debacle in the ongoing tournament and the man is trying to grab anything that comes his way out of desperation. In future, other teams too can be in the same fix as Buchan is today and if the lobby happens to be stronger, IPL might give in to make room for more overseas players in the playing eleven.

And this will prove costly for the Indian domestic cricket - in terms of money and more importantly in terms of the prospect of the upcoming cricket talents in the country. The more the cash-rich franchises will seek to resort to the foreign cricketers, the more the young talents would be ignored. IPL’s foreign inclination is hard to overlook and if one fine morning it occurs to IPL that there is after all some logic in the Buchanan-theory, then it will be the local, rising stars who would be deprived of their rightful share in the event. On the other hand, by sticking to its four-foreign-player rule, it can very well act as the launch pad for the young Indian talent.

A former Indian cricketer, currently playing for an IPL team, on condition of anonymity told a leading daily that request for the increase in the number of overseas players in the playing eleven had been there too in the last season, but it did not materialized. “This year someone might say let us have five foreign players and then there will be no stopping that demand. The key in having foreign players is that besides their obvious skills, their expertise might rub onto the younger local players. The quota of four per playing eleven is adequate.”

E.A.S. Prasanna, a former ICL associate however, condemned the idea in plain English, “The IPL authorities should ensure that more Indians get to play the tournament and another point I want to stress is that foreign players should be available for the entire duration of the tournament, irrespective of whether they are in the eleven or not. These players are paid exorbitant amounts and they just cannot play a few games and vanish.”

Cricket360 completely agrees with the anonymous former Indian player, who said that “It is called the Indian Premier League and you can’t have that name and then field more foreign players.” In Cricket360’s opinion any move for including more foreign cricketers in the playing eleven must be stopped at any cost and the thrust should be on discovering the jewels from the arena of Indian domestic cricket.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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