The controversy between ECB and IPL started long way back. Now the story has got a twist with ICL is expected to field an English team in the forthcoming ICL season. The fight over ECB sending team, with players of ICL to IPL World Championship was quite infamous. All were against ECB’s stand over the issue.
IPL was keen to caution ECB not to include them in the IPL World Championship. Now ECB is allowing its ex-players and county players to participate in ICL. Speculations are there over senior players like Graeme Hick joining ICL in the near future. Recently Kapil Dev announced that he would try the maximum to field London, Birmingham or any other English city team in the forthcoming ICL if he could find a sponsor.
ECB chairman Giles Clarke’s new policies strengthen the belief that ECB is playing a tricky game against IPL and BCCI. He plans to split the county championship in to three divisions and also to loan foreign players to underperforming counties. His ultimate aim is to create English Premiere League with teams out side the counties also. The plan is to set up a competitor to IPL with almost the similar structure.
ECB wants to reduce the success rate of IPL in order to their EPL an upper hand. For this, they are ready to support the unofficial ICL. To create a domestic rival to IPL, they support them and permit their county players and retired players to play in ICL. In addition to that, like ‘Dhaka Warriors’, they plan to create an English team in the forthcoming ICL season too.
