Issue # 457 (35)
THE CONTACT
15 May to 21 May 2012
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BCCI invites Pakistan to take part in this year’s Champions League T20 event
CHENNAI: India on Saturday invited Pakistan to take part in the Champions League Twenty20 tournament this year, breaking new ground in the stalled cricket ties between the archrivals. The Board of Control for Cricket in India ( BCCI), which met in Chennai on Saturday, gave the go ahead to Pakistan’s participation in the tournament which features leading domestic Twenty20 teams from around the world.
“ The BCCI has decided to invite a team from Pakistan to play in the Champions League to be held in India in October,” BCCI chief Narayanaswami
Srinivasan told reporters after the meeting.
“ The BCCI’s recommenda- tion will be forwarded to the gov- erning council of the Champions League which is owned by the cricket boards of India, Australia and South Africa,” Srinivasan added. India and Pakistan met in the Asia Cup in Bangladesh in March and the World Cup semi- final in India last year, but regular tours have been frozen since the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, blamed on Pakistan- based militants.
Asked if this was the first step towards reviving relations with Pakistan, Srinivasan said: “
Mamata, CAB
honour Sachin with golden bat & ball
Today, the decision is limited to the Champions League. I don’t want to say anything beyond it.” Pakistani teams did not feature in the first three editions of the Champions League, an off- shoot of the hugely popular Indian Pre- mier League ( IPL), which began in 2009.
Pakistani players have also been left out of the IPL after tak- ing part in the inaugural season in 2008.
Skipper Shoaib excited Sialkot Stallions are the cur- rent Pakistan domestic T20 champions. Sialkot captain Shoaib Malik welcomed BCCI’s move. “ It is a relief to hear that
finally we will get a chance to compete with the best teams in the Champions League,” Malik was quoted as saying by PTI news agency.
Sialkot were invited to the in- augural edition of the tournament towards the end of 2008, but it was postponed after the terror
attacks in Mumbai in November. Meanwhile, the working com- mittee also approved a limited number of friendly matches to be played by IPL teams with asso- ciate and affiliate countries of the ICC, between June and August, subject to guidelines to be framed by the BCCI.
Spot fixing cloud over IPL
KOLKATA: With the crowd roaring “ Sachin, Sachin”, and leaflets and cut- outs saluting him, batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar was on Saturday fe- licitated by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Cricket Association of Ben- gal ( CAB) at the Eden Gardens for scoring a century of interna- tional hundreds. Tendulkar was presented a golden bat and ball by Banerjee, while CAB president Jagmohan Dalmiya gifted hundred guineas — one for each hundred — to the batting genius before the In- dian Premier League ( IPL) clash between the Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders got under way here.
Handing out the golden bat and a memento to Tendulkar, Banerjee called him a golden boy.
“ On behalf of the government of ( West) Bengal, we congratu- late Sachin. He is a golden boy, that’s why we have given him a golden bat and a ball. We salute you for your achievements. We are all so proud of you,” said Banerjee, who was accompanied by many of her ministers. Much to the delight of the near capacity galleries, Tendulkar said ‘ Bhaloachi’ ( I am well) in Bengali and thanked the Eden Gardens crowd for their support over the years. “ Thank you all for the all the support I have seen over the years. It has been a pleasure playing here throughout the 23 years of my career. I will always cherish these memories. I hope you will continue to support me and the Indian team like you always have,” said Tendulkar.
A TV channel today claimed to have blown the lid off "murky deals" in the IPL among play- ers, organisers, owners and big guns of Indian cricket, prompt- ing the BCCI to warn that strin- gent action will be taken if the report is found to be true. The channel, India TV, claimed it had done a sting operation in which many players confessed on hid- den camera they get much more than their prescribed auction under the table. According to the channel, its operation also re- vealed that spot-fixing is not only prevalent in IPL but also that first class matches are fixed and women played an important role in match-fixing. The sting opera- tion allegedly shows local play- ers like Shalabh Srivastava, T P Sudhindra and Mohnish Mishra. The video purpotedly shows that local players go against the IPl rule book and negotiate with teams to get a better package. The sting claims that Deccan Chargers' Sudhindra asked for money to change his team, while Srivatsava allegedly asked for Rs 10 lakh to bowl a no-ball. Mohnish Mishra had told them that he was earning 1.45 crore with the Deccan Chargers. Ac- cording to the BCCI guidelines, he can not earn more than 30 Lakh as he is an uncapped player, but Mishra apparently confessed that he gets 1 crore in black money. Superstars of Indian cricket and even an in- ternational player, who is a cap- tain of one of the teams, are in- volved in fixing the matches, the channel said in a statement. Asked about the sting opera-
Shalabh Srivastava (right) is one of the players allegedly 'exposed' by the sting operation.
tion, BCCI chief N Srinivasan said,"We will ensure that the in- tegrity of the game is protected. BCCI believes in the integrity of the game. We will take the strictest possible action. We will have to have the tapes and the moment we see it, whoever is the player, we will take very very strict action." "If there is any truth in it… It is a fact that we will take strictest action. Even if it means suspending the player immediately. But (that has to be) based on some evidence and fact, for which I have asked the COO of IPL Sundar Raman to request for the tape," he said. Srinivasan said he has asked the Governing Council of the IPL so that in the morning there will be a tele-conferencing of the gov- erning council to go into this matter. We will act to show that this is not tolerated." "IPL, we believe is clean. We have got the Anti-Corruption Unit covering it. They are the in-chanrge of the security. We have got Ravi
Swami, who was heading BCCI's Anti-Corruption Unit to take it up for us." "People can make allegations. But if there is any shred of evidence, we will take action. The channel claimed that an IPL player confessed that he was getting Rs.1.45 crore from its owner whereas he was in the Rs.30 lakh slab. It named an IPL player, claiming he had bowled a no-ball in last year's first class match on the insistence of the channel's reporter. He had also assured to change his team in future if he was paid Rs.60 lakh, the channel said. Another player demanded Rs.10 lakh for bowling a no-ball in an IPL match, it said. The channel said a pattern has emerged where a particular bowler pitches easy deliveries and there are dropped catches.
The BCCI also said in re- lease that it will seek a "com- plete footage" of the 'sting op- eration' and examined thor- oughly.
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