Twenty 20 Blog

Pakistan’s cricket board is planning a bid to host the 2014 Twenty20 World Cup in the hope that the security situation in the country improves over the next five years, local media reported on Monday.

“Hopefully by that time the conditions to host international events would be ideal in our country,” Pakistan Cricket Board chief Ijaz Butt told The News from South Africa, where the national team is contesting the Champions Trophy.

The PCB’s top official is scheduled to hold meetings with officials of other cricket boards to “muster their support” while in South Africa, The News reported.

Pakistan lost the rights to host the Champions Trophy last year due to concerns expressed by leading foreign teams. The tournament was postponed by 12 months and moved to South Africa.

Pakistan was also stripped of its rights as co-host of the 2011 World Cup following a terror attack on the Sri Lanka test team earlier this year. It will share revenue with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh but will not host any of the matches in international cricket’s leading limited-overs tournament.

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Trinidad and Tobago’s captain Daren Ganga has been given the green light to play in next month’s Champions League in India after an initial threat that he may have been denied time-off by his employers.

National energy minister Conrad Enill was contacted by football guru Jack Warner on the issue and Ganga is now set to play in the October 8-23 tournament, which brings together the world’s top Twenty20 club teams.

Member of Parliament Warner had described as disgraceful, a decision by Petrotrin to refuse time off for Ganga to take part in the tournament.

Warner, a vice-president of football’s world governing body FIFA, said after hearing of Ganga’s plight, he was both angry and disappointed.

“I still can’t believe in this day and age, people are still being refused time off to represent our country, particularly by a state-owned company. Petrotrin should be ashamed.”

Warner said he felt compelled to intervene after learning of Ganga’s plight.

“I tried to get in contact with the sports minister but he was busy so I called the line minister and he responded immediately,” said Warner.

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New Zealand Cricket bowling coach Vaughn Johnson believes Otago has sufficient firepower in its bowling to progress to the last eight of the Champions League twenty20 tournament beginning in India next month.

Johnson, a former Otago player and coach, has been called in to help prepare the Volts’ attack before its biggest challenge.

Otago opens its campaign against South Africa’s Cape Cobras on October 10 and plays the Bangalore Royal Challengers two days later.

A win in either of those matches could be enough to send Otago through to the final eight.

And while twenty/20 is a batsman’s game, Johnson rates the Otago attack, which includes three international players: Black Caps Nathan McCullum and Ian Butler and English all-rounder Dimitri Mascarenhas.

“Having Nathan McCullum adds a huge amount to their attack,” Johnson said.

“And in guys like [Mat] Harvie, [Warren] McSkimming, Mascarenhas, [James] McMillan, Butler and [Neil] Wagner you’ve got pace bowlers who are proven at first-class level, and some of them proven at international level.

So with Nathan and young Nick Beard in the spin attack, along with those six quicks, you’ve got a really balanced attack,” he said.

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Virender Sehwag has stepped down as captain of Delhi Daredevils, the franchise said on Monday. Sehwag, who is recovering from a shoulder injury, said he wanted to focus on his batting. Gautam Gambhir will lead Delhi in next month’s Champions League Twenty20, and is expected to remain captain in next year’s IPL, with wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik as his deputy.

“I would like to thank GMR [the franchise owners] for their understanding in accepting my request to step down,” Sehwag said. “Personally, I would like to concentrate on my own batting and contribute to the team.”

Sehwag - who recently had said he had no desire to lead India - informed the franchise of his decision immediately after the IPL’s second edition in May this year. But given the team’s great success in the tournament - they topped the league table and lost to eventual champions Deccan Chargers in the semi-final - the owners believed the decision was impulsive and decided to give him more time.

“We thought he [Sehwag] had made a statement in the heat of the moment,” a team official told Cricinfo. “We consulted him once again, about a month later. He stuck to his stand. So after deliberations we started to look for a successor and zeroed in on Gambhir.”

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Thrilling contests will be the order of the day at the Champions Trophy, especially following a raging debate over the future of one-day cricket.

The 11-year-old tournament may have witnessed many nail-biting matches, but is still competing with the 50-over World Cup and Twenty20 World Championships for popularity and glamour.

Wisden described the 2006 edition — held just five months before the World Cup — as “the unwanted stepchild of international cricket”, while Matthew Hayden recently suggested the tournament be scrapped.

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

The biennial tournament, a brainchild of former International Cricket Council (ICC) chief Jagmohan Dalmiya, has already had more than its fair share of criticism since it was launched in 1998 in Dhaka.

The event was known as ICC Knock-Out at Dhaka and at Nairobi two years later, but its format left a lot to be desired as just one bad match sent the favourites home, like Australia.

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Captain Younus Khan believes Pakistan can build on their World Twenty20 success when they vie for an elusive Champions Trophy title in South Africa.

Pakistan, who have never won or played in the final of the Champions Trophy since its inception in 1998, face a second-string West Indies in their opening Group A match before crucial games against India and Australia.

Younus, who led Pakistan to the World Twenty20 title in England in June, hopes his team can emulate that feat in one-day cricket.

“Our World Twenty20 win has given us confidence and I think we can build on that success in the Champions Trophy. Maybe there is a difference of overs, but the style remains the same and now a team can chase 350-plus,” said Younus.

Pakistan have lost their last three one-day series — the first against Sri Lanka at home which resulted in Younus taking over from Shoaib Malik — but Younus said the losses have not dampened spirits.

“The way we lost the one-day series in Sri Lanka, losing the first three matches and then winning the last two with big margins proved that we have the capability to win when we play to our potential.

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Twenty20 cricket is expanding further in New Zealand, with the six domestic associations set to play 10 rounds this summer.

The competition will run through January and culminate in a one-off final between the top two teams, New Zealand Cricket (NZC) chief executive Justin Vaughan announced today.

He said the expansion from last year’s eight rounds was partly because the winners of the competition were guaranteed a place in the Champions League tournament.

Any of the 12 teams taking part in that competition — which includes last year’s New Zealand champions Otago — automatically earn $US100,000 ($NZ143,410).

“The advent of the Champions League is going to give unprecedented focus to this year’s domestic twenty20 championship,” Vaughan said.

“To be competing and knowing to win the competition would take you on a trip to India to play against the leading domestic Twenty20 teams in the world is extraordinary.

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Andrew Flintoff is giving serious consideration to becoming a freelancer cricketer according to his manager, Andrew Chandler, in a Sunday newspaper. Flintoff has already received a number of offers, but his recent knee surgery means he will be sidelined for at least six months. On Friday he was awarded an incremental contract by the ECB, but the option of lucrative Twenty20 deals will be very tempting.

Flintoff ’s freelancing would have followed the route expected to be taken by Australian allrounder, Andrew Symonds, who is also eyeing several Twenty20 opportunities around the world after his national career stalled due to disciplinary issues.

“He’ll play for Chennai [Super Kings in the IPL], he might play for an Australian team, a South African team, maybe one in the West Indies,” Chandler told the Observer. “If he hadn’t have been injured he would have probably played in December-January in Australia. And then at the end of January, early February in South Africa. I was already negotiating with them. We were negotiating with South Australia and the Durban team, the Nashua Dolphins. And there’s been an offer from Northern Transvaal [Northerns] as well.”

Flintoff is heading to Dubai for a three-month spell to aid his rehabilitation from a right knee surgery after was operated on a day after helping England regain the Ashes, his farewell Test series. He has targeted a return to full

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Victorian Bushrangers batsman David Hussey on Friday tipped Delhi Daredevils as the favourties to win the inaugural edition of the Champions League Twenty20 tournament.

Hussey nominated the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise as the major threat in October’s tournament, which brings together the 12 best domestic Twenty20 sides from across the world.

The Daredevils topped the league table after pool games in the second edition of the IPL, but were eliminated in the semi-finals by the eventual champions, Adam Gilchrist’s Deccan Chargers.

Hussey said, “Delhi’s strength lay in their explosive openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir and pacemen Ashish Nehra and Dirk Nannes.”

Nannes helped the Bushrangers reach the Champions League Twenty20, but will be play against the side this time around owing to a contract clause.

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David Warner is still waiting to hear what went wrong with his one-day career.

Remember whirlwind Warner last summer?

He brought the biff back to Twenty20 with an incredible 83 against South Africa. The kid was promptly introduced to the opening spot in the one-day internationals in the hope he would be some sort of meta mix of Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden.

In the six 50-over games he played Warner scored 5, 61, 1, 22, 7 and 2 before selector Jamie Cox tapped him on the shoulder.

The selector said ‘thanks pal, you’re not playing today, pack your bags you are no longer in the squad. Give us a call sometime and we’ll chat’.

And that was all she wrote.

You might, like Warner, have thought the selectors would have been on the Cricket Australia mobile telling the young man what they wanted. But no.

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