Twenty 20 Blog

South Africa captain Graeme Smith has pulled out of next month’s Champions League Twenty20 tournament in order to ensure he is fit to face England.

Smith, who plays for the Cape Cobras, has been struggling with a leg injury, despite scoring 141 in a losing cause against England on Sunday.

The inaugural Champions League gets under way on 8 November, with the Cobras in action against Bangalore.

England’s 10-week tour begins with a warm-up game on 6 November.

The tour includes two Twenty20 internationals, five one-day internationals and four Tests.

Smith is set to miss the next four to six weeks as he recovers from the injury.

“After much discussion and deliberation, the Proteas’ management, together with the medical committee of Cricket South Africa, have made a decision to withdraw Graeme from the upcoming Champions League in India,” said national team manager Dr Mohammed Moosajee.

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South African opener Herschelle Gibbs will play for the Deccan Chargers in the Indian Champions League Twenty20 series rather than his home team Cape Cobras, which is also participating in the tournament.

Gibbs’ agent Donne Commins told the Afrikaans daily Beeld in Jo’burg that the player would be available for the IPL side and Cape Cobras will be compensated because Gibbs would not be available to play for them.

Gibbs helped Deccan Chargers win the second edition of the Indian Premier League which was shifted to South Africa because of security concerns during the elections in India. he Cape Cobras, who beat the Diamond Eagles in the final of the Pro20 series in South Africa this year, will play against the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening game of the Champions League.

Although their IPL teams have not qualified for the Champions League, two other South Africans who excelled in the IPL series here, Rajasthan Royal’s Graeme Smith and Mumbai Indian’s JP Duminy, may well also be playing for the Cape Cobras in India.

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The proposed Southern Premier League involving teams based in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand looks increasingly unlikely to go ahead due to the crowded international calendar.

It had been hoped the Twenty20 tournament, which would involve the leading players from all three countries plus other international stars, would be held in October every year, starting from 2011.

But early discussions around the International Cricket Council’s post-2012 Future Tours Programme (FTP) has made the three countries realise that no natural window exists for the tournament.

“The problem that we’ve had is trying to find space. We all know that there is a lot of international cricket,” said New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan.

“We’ve got a lot of international cricket events like the World Twenty20. There’s the World Cup and then there is the Indian Premier League which takes place in April-May every year.”

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When cricket historians look back in years to come they may well decide that 2009 was the year that the Twenty20 format came of age. They will say this was the year when the unruly offspring joined the accepted family of cricket’s formats.

Perhaps not regarded as the ultimate test of a team’s ability, that will surely always be the five-match five-day Test series, but still a valid and recognised method of sorting out the cricketing men from the boys.

Why 2009? You may ask. Well two reasons. First the IPL was moved from its natural home in India due to security reasons for its second season prompting a multitude of questions.

Could the organisers and the South Africans hosts put on the event at such short notice? Yes, they could. Would it be as exciting as the inaugural season? Yes. Would the passion of the crowds transfer to South Africa? Would the playing standards reach the same levels? Would the best in the world still be queuing up to appear? Yes, yes and yes.

But there was one important question that was answered no. Would it surpass and replace international cricket?

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The face of cricket, as it had been known to the pundits, has been almost irreversibly altered by a format of the game, which had been scoffed at to begin with as another one akin to the one found in a charity game, but has since then, been accepted by the majority. And what a turnaround it has been. Right from those times when the English cricket board introduced the Twenty20s to sway the crowds back into the stadiums to the BCCI rejecting the format and then reluctantly sending a team to the first edition of the ICC World Twenty20, followed by the glamour and the glitz of the IPL interspersed with the other controversial leagues in the ICL and the Stanford tournaments, Twenty20 has come a long way.

Not only has the general public’s interest at large, or the bank accounts of the players in particular been beefed up, but to play devil’s advocate – as a self-respecting lover of test cricket – there isn’t too much doubt that Twenty20s have assisted cricket in general.

From ‘test’ of patience to batting ferocities

Gone are the days when a dour-looking Geoffrey Boycott could prod and plonk his way to a century after playing through majority of the test match and then have Sunil Gavaskar return back the compliment and test the patience of both, the opposition bowling and the ground audiences to the hilt. Tons in only a

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