Former Australia leg-spinner Shane Warne called on Monday for the abolition of 50 overs internationals in favour of the Twenty20 game.

“This is a big call but cricket evolves and the 50-over game is past its sell-by date,” Warne wrote in his column in The Times. “From now on we should be playing tests and Twenty20 internationals with a Twenty20 World Cup every two years.”

Source: Reuters

Karachi: As part of an out-of-court settlement with the ICC on the 2011 World Cup hosting dispute, Pakistan is looking at the possibility of playing a Test and ODI series against India in England next year.

Well-placed sources in the Pakistan Cricket Board said that ICC President David Morgan, during his talks with PCB chairman Ejaz Butt, had assured that he would try to convince the BCCI to play a series in England.

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Stuart Binny returning from the ICL, came within one bid of overtaking Robin Uthappa as the highest-paid cricketer in the Karnataka Premier League (KPL), Karnataka’s IPL-style tournament. In an auction for 48 top players from Karnataka, at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore Brigaders (Bangalore Urban) made the highest bid, buying Uthappa for Rs 325,000, while Binny went to Bijapur Bulls for Rs 320,000.

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LONDON: London 2012 officials have appointed the London Marathon organisers to manage and help design the course for the Olympic event.

The London Marathon will provide the organising committee with free staff and equipment, including start facilities, race vehicles and feeding stations, for both the Olympic and Paralympic events.
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Fifa has launched a fund to give away 120,000 free tickets to poor South Africans for the 2010 World Cup.

The tickets will given to people involved in social development in the country as a reward for their efforts.

“The tickets will enable people who would never have had a chance to attend the World Cup games to see the event,” said Danny Jordaan, chief of the LOC.

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Malaysian Grand Prix organisers will push back the start time of the 2010 race by an hour after a frustrating washout at the Sepang Circuit in this year’s race, media reported Thursday.

The 2009 race was started at 5pm (0900 GMT) local time in order to meet the demands of F1 decision makers, who want to attract bigger television audiences in Europe.

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The volatile security situation in Pakistan continues to scare away foreign cricket team and even Zimbabwe today turned down an invitation to send its under-19 team to the trouble-torn country.
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MUMBAI: Four new venues and a third place playoff match will be introduced in the third Indian Premier League which will get underway in

Hyderabad on March 12, 2010 with a game between IPL II winners Deccan Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders.

IPL III schedule

The final of the 45-day Twenty20 cricket league, which proved a huge success in its first two editions in India and South Africa, would be held on April 25, IPL Chairman Lalit Modi announced after a meeting of its Governing Council on Tuesday.

IPL III will have four additional match staging centres — Nagpur, Vishakhapatnam, Ahmedabad and Dharamsala — and will also stage one extra match, the 60th, for the third place play-off, Modi said.

“The playing window remains the same, 45 days”, Modi said before adding that the Governing Council also decided to include two more franchisees in IPL IV to be held in 2011.

“There would be 94 games in all with each franchisee playing 18, instead of 14 preliminary phase games. But the window would remain more or less the same,” Modi said.

The four additional venues would host matches featuring Mumbai Indians, Deccan Chargers, Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals, Modi said.

“Nagpur would host some matches of Mumbai Indians, Vishakhapatnam of Deccan Chargers, Ahmedabad of Rajasthan Royals and Dharamsala of Kings XI Punjab,” he said.

Modi also said the IPL decided to allow players who have switched allegiance from the Indian Cricket League to the Cricket Board by taking advantage of the latter’s amnesty scheme provided the BCCI Working Committee approves this move in its meeting here on August 13.

“Provided the BCCI Working Committee approves this, the salary cap for such players who have returned from the rebel league has been fixed between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 20 lakh except those who have played internationals who would have to be auctioned off,” he said.

The salary cap for each franchise also remains the same at $7 million as well as the number of foreign players (10 in all and four in a playing XI), Modi said.

He said the new trading window would open from December 15, 2009 to January 5, 2010 and all other conditions would remain the same as last year.

Modi said there is a change in the strategic time-out that was introduced in IPL II and received mixed responses from players and critics. They have been reduced from 10 minutes to five.

“The time-outs are mandatory with the bowling team mandated to utilise the first time out lasting 2.5 minutes between overs 6 and 10 and the batting team the second between overs 11 and 16,” the IPL chairman said.

“We have finalised the entire schedule of IPL III eight months ahead,” he declared.

Modi also made it clear that players contracted to their country’s boards for one year cannot just refuse to sign the contract when offered to them the next year in order to play in the IPL.

“A contracted player in the previous year will have to get an NOC from his home board to appear in the IPL. We want to plug this loophole and to maintain the sanctity of international cricket,” Modi said explaining that such cases have come to the fore.

From IPL-IV, to be held in 2011, Modi said the icon player status enjoyed by some players currently would not be in existence.

“There won’t be an icon player from IPL-IV,” he said. Modi expects a franchise team to represent a city from Gujarat from IPL-IV because of the level of interest shown in IPL I and II by that state’s cricket lovers.

Source: Times of India

The England badminton team were criticised by the sport’s governing body yesterday after withdrawing from the World Championships in India amid fears that the Islamist terrorist group responsible for last year’s atrocity in Mumbai is planning to target the tournament.

It was thought that players from Scotland and Wales were likely to remain in the southern city of Hyderabad despite the terrorist fears that have also served to heighten concerns about the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Thomas Lund, the chief operating officer of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) said: “Whilst the BWF respects the decision by England, it’s unfortunate that the English team made their decision before we had had an opportunity to properly brief the team management before they decided. We had intelligence information which would have been important in the assessment of the security of their team.”

The eight-strong England team pulled out of the event, which starts today, over “concerns about the team potentially being a target”, Badminton England said in a statement.

The move came after local media reported that India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) believed that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist faction was planning a strike similar to the commando-style ambush of the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan, in March, which killed seven people and wounded six players. An attack by ten LeT gunmen in Mumbai in November claimed 166 lives.

Indian officials played down the reports but Hyderabad is regarded as a key LeT base and has a history of Muslim-Hindu violence. Ajit Doval, a former director of the IB, told The Times that the Pakistan-based group were known to have a presence, including sleeper cells, in the city. “It has been one of their strongest bases in India,” he said.

Last month, Manchester United were forced to abandon a tour of Indonesia after bomb attacks at two hotels, including the one in which the team were due to stay, killed seven people. It has been suggested that United were the target but the attack, responsibility for which was claimed by an offshoot of al-Qaeda, was mistimed.

In April, the Indian Premier League, cricket’s wealthiest tournament, was moved from the subcontinent to South Africa. The switch, which cost as much as £300 million, was forced by the Lahore attack.

The chief executive of Badminton England, Adrian Christy, said: “After the Olympic Games, this is the most prestigious championships in the world but we were not prepared to risk the safety of our players, coaches and staff in what we felt could have been a very volatile environment.

Christy said the team, which included Nathan Robertson, the Olympic silver medallist , had “carefully considered” information from local police authorities.

India’s Home Ministry and police in Hyderabad yesterday denied that a threat was received from the LeT.

V.K. Verma, president of the Badminton Association of India, said that the England team had “taken some media reports seriously”. The 44 other teams, including the United States, Russia, France, China and Indonesia, had arrived for the championships, he added. “No other country has pulled out,” he said.

Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister, said: “Badminton England have made their decision and Foreign Office advice is also saying that there could be trouble in that particular area.

“I hope we can do something about it because clearly we’ve got the Commonwealth Games in India next year, and we don’t want to see major sporting events affected in this way.”

Source: Times Online

The hospitality industry in southern Africa is actively gearing up to host thousands of visitors as the 2010 World Cup Soccer final fast approaches.

This major world sporting event will be held for the first time on African soil in South Africa in June-July next year.

According to the world football governing body, FIFA, more than 90,000 soccer fans and officials mainly from qualifying countries are expected to come to South Africa for the finals. This is in addition to as many as 400,000 tourists from all over the world that are expected to visit Africa during the tournament.

The anticipated huge turnout and South Africa’s acknowledgement that it can only accommodate about half of the guests has prompted its southern African neighbours to intensify their tourism programmes to woo some of the tourists.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is endowed with numerous attractions such as the Victoria Falls between Zambia and Zimbabwe, the Namib Desert, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, pristine coastal beaches, game parks and reserves teeming with wildlife, dramatic scenery and the rich traditional culture throughout the region.

To ensure the world enjoys and samples some of these attractions as well as to enable the region to cater for the sudden boom in arrivals, the SADC countries are spending millions of dollars in refurbishment and construction of new hotels, airports and other infrastructure.

Member states are also taking the opportunity to strengthen regional projects such as the Transfrontier Conservation Areas and national parks.

These conservation areas include the Kavango Zambezi Conservation Area between Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area which straddles Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique.

Other strategies employed by the region include joint marketing campaigns that go beyond 2010 as well as crafting of regional tourism packages, which encourage visitors to tour more than one country in southern Africa.

In June, nine SADC member states launched the Boundless Southern Africa Expedition targeted at marketing the countries to the soccer world cup final and beyond. These are Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The expedition, which started in Botswana, highlights the conservation of the environment and showcases the diversity of southern Africa’s people and their rich culture.

The hospitality industry in some SADC member states has taken the lead to invite foreign teams to camp in their respective countries before and during the 2010 finals.

Several neighbouring countries have approached a number of teams such as Brazil and Germany that they expect to do well and thus remain in the region throughout the tournament, and are confident that they have the necessary facilities to host visiting soccer teams.

In other SADC countries such as Angola, where the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations will be held next January-February, construction of new hotels has advanced with most located in Luanda.

Angola has set aside more than US$270 million for rebuilding airports to ensure the smooth movement of visitors to both the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations.

Botswana is refurbishing the Sir Seretse Khama Airport to handle bigger aircraft as is Zimbabwe for the Victoria Falls Airport. In Lesotho and Swaziland work is in progress to market the two southern African countries to potential tourists during the world finals.

Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia are also positioning themselves to benefit from the finals through upgrading their facilities as well as packaging attractions.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar risk losing out from the business of the finals because of political instability.

An urgent solution to the political and civil unrest would see both countries hosting some of the visitors to southern Africa and enable the 2010 Soccer World Cup to significantly contribute towards economic growth in the whole SADC region.

A total of 32 nations from all the five continents will take part in the finals.

Source: All Africa