The dispute over corporate suites had prompted several South African newspapers to speculate that the IPL could be cancelled. That, though, appears unlikely, with officials from both countries eager to reach a compromise.

“We are close to resolving this,” Andre Odendaal, the chief executive of Western Province, told Cricinfo. “The IPL had very high expectations initially, but after talking through the issues, they have been very understanding and reduced their request. The request now is very reasonable. This is about striking a balance between our own members, and making (IPL franchises) feel welcome.

“We are all facing a big challenge. We are hosting the biggest cricket tournament in the world in ten days time. There were always going to be certain issues, but I think all parties have done a good job of working through those so the tournament can go ahead.”

Gerald Majola, the chief executive of Cricket South Africa (CSA), was similarly confident that the dispute over corporate suites would be resolved.

“CSA will look to uphold the interest and rights of all stakeholders,” Majola said in a statement. “Discussions are in the final stages of an amicable resolution for all parties concerned and CSA is confident that this matter will be settled soon.

Should Indian executives agree to fewer corporate suites, it would be the IPL’s second major back down in a week. The IPL relaxed the prohibitive terms and conditions it had placed on non-rights holding media on Thursday, prompting major news agencies, including Reuters and Associated Press, to end their boycott of the tournament.

Source : IPL seek compromise in box row

The Rajasthan Royals’ warm-up for next week’s IPL began with defeat to the Cape Cobras at Newlands. The defending IPL champions, fielding an XI that included rookie Indians and a few first-time overseas names, did well in the field but couldn’t reach the target of 143 set by the Cobras, South Africa’s domestic Pro20 champions.

The Australian import Rob Quiney got Rajasthan’s reply off to a good start, but with wickets falling at regular intervals at the other end, he too succumbed to the pressure. Naman Ojha was the first to go for 10, edging the burly medium-pacer Rory Kleinveldt behind, before Vernon Philander cut Quiney off on 34. Robin Peterson then drew a leading edge from the experienced Mohammad Kaif. The wobble was on.

Peterson drew another wicket when he beat Lee Carseldine’s bat and the wicketkeeper Ryan Canning dislodged the bails. It was a tight call that went in Cobras’ favour. The next to go was the explosive Tyron Henderson who, after hitting a big six, was run out by a flat throw from Philander. Justin Ontong came on for some spin and brought about a top-edged sweep off Ravindra Jadeja’s bat.

Peterson’s tidy spin kept a check on runs and the asking rate inched toward nine at this stage. Enter Shane Warne, who shuffled about his crease and looked in the mood to just biff the ball. He was given a life by Andrew Puttick at long-on but hit a few classy shots before he top-edged an attempted steer to third man and was well held for 21 off 19 balls. Rajasthan collapsed against the disciplined Kleinveldt, who took four, and fell 28 runs short.

The hosts’ 142 was set up by some clean hitting from Richard Levi (36 off 22 balls), Philander (26 off 21) and Kleinveldt (23 off 17) after a young Rajasthan pace attack made early inroads. In the second over, Peterson – in his first game for the Cobras after transferring from the Warriors – got a faint tickle off medium-pacer Amit Singh for 1. That became 15 for 2 in the third over when Puttick, down a place to No. 3, nicked Siddarth Trivedi to Ojha. Ontong’s off stump was knocked out of its base by a lovely yorker from Kamran Khan to make it 22 for 3. Kamran, who was picked out of obscurity in February without any first-class experience, bowled just the one over.

Warne and Jadeja picked up a wicket each with their brands of spin to further dent the Cobras. But Philander, Levi – especially impressive with his hand-eye coordination – and Kleinveldt hit some courageous shots to get the total to respectability. Singh, the medium-pacer from Gujarat, had 3 for 18 from his four overs.

Warne had said before the game he wanted a tough warm-up ahead of the second edition of the IPL and he got it.

Source: Kleinveldt’s four wrecks Rajasthan’s warm-up

The News Media Coalition, the umbrella body that comprises global news and photograph agencies Reuters, AP, AFP and Getty Images, has failed to get the tournament’s organisers to amend the conditions.

Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman, refused to change rules which barred the distribution of photographs and news to cricket-specific websites. The IPL has an exclusive agreement to supply news and photos about the Twenty20 tournament to one website.

“We can’t allow the sponsor of a newsworthy event to specify where news gets distributed,” Dave Tomlin, the AP’s associate general counsel, said. “This is a case in which a sports association is now in the information business too and is trying to carve out an exclusive segment of the news market as its own to exploit. It’s wrong.”

Last year, besides agencies, news channels in India had also threatened a boycott over the constraints laid down by the IPL before agreeing to cover it after the tournament’s organisers acceded to their main demands

Source – News agencies to boycott IPL

A move to reinstate Lee for the series in the United Arab Emirates was considereIndian Premier League (IPL) 2009, Watch online IPL Cricket Match, IPL Cricket Match Streaming, ipl matches, ipl 2009 cricket tournament, free live ipl cricket match, watch online ipl cricket matchd highly unlikely last month, given that he has not played a match since undergoing surgery to his left ankle in January. But an intense training regime – he has worked with a personal trainer six days a week since the beginning of February and added 10kg of lean muscle mass – has accelerated his recovery, and medical staff are understood to be impressed with the progress he has made.

Lee is not guaranteed to be recalled to the squad for the Pakistan series, but the fact he has entered selection calculations indicates he is nearing full fitness. Should Andrew Hilditch’s panel opt for the more conservative approach and overlook him for the three-week one-day series, Lee is likely to make his return to competitive cricket with the Kings XI Punjab in the IPL, as originally planned.

Lee has been confined to bowling indoors in recent weeks as Australian cricket fields have been turned over to the nation’s various football codes, but will now have the opportunity to increase his workload during outdoor sessions with Australia and the Kings XI. He will do so under the supervision of New South Wales and Kings XI physiotherapist Pat Farhart, who has made the trip to South Africa with him.

The progress of Lee, and Australia’s wavering one-day form in South Africa, will prompt a nervous wait for the incumbents ahead of Wednesday’s squad announcement for the Pakistan series. The top order was ruthlessly exposed by the South African pace duo of Dale Steyn and Wayne Parnell in Centurion on Sunday, and will not have a chance to make amends before the selectors meet.

Andrew Symonds will be available for selection after satisfying the conditions placed upon him by Cricket Australia following a series of behavioural infractions. Still rated among the world’s premier exponents of the one-day game, and a key ally of Ricky Ponting, Symonds is favoured to be recalled to a side in desperate need of a top-order spark.

Symonds’ veteran presence will be all the more coveted by selectors if, as expected, Michael Hussey is rested for the Pakistan series. Hussey has played virtually non-stop since last year’s tour of India, and this week announced his withdrawal from the home-and-away stages of the IPL to spend more time with his family in Perth.

Source: Hopeful Lee turns up in South Africa

“It’s been frustrating with the hip injury, thigh injury and getting hit on the thumb just before the end of the tour of the West Indies and I think the IPL will be good for me,” said Flintoff, who had earlier expressed disappointment at not being able to play the tournament in India. “There are a few people putting it down but keeping playing should help me out a lot. When I stop and start is when my body is at its most vulnerable.

“I know I’m only bowling four overs a game, but it will give me a chance to work on my game in between games going into a Test series and I will be working with top facilities out in South Africa.”

England’s hectic summer includes Test and one-day series against West Indies, the World Twenty20, the Ashes and a seven-match one-day series against Australia. The other leading England players in the IPL include Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood, Owais Shah and Ravi Bopara, all of whom will report back to England by May 1.

“It is a long schedule and everyone is looking forward to the Ashes and making sure everyone is fit for that but I’ve stressed all along that we have to perform in all the games we’re playing,” Flintoff said. “From my point of view, although it’s been frustrating I’ve had four or five weeks when I’ve not played because I’ve been injured so I’m probably fresher than a lot of the lads. If I’m asked whether I’m jaded in September I’ll probably be on my knees but at this moment in time I’m looking forward to getting on with it.”

During the IPL Flintoff will play alongside Matthew Hayden, MS Dhoni and Muttiah Muralitharan for Chennai and he hoped it would give him clues about preparation techniques and the strengths and weaknesses of opposition in the World Twenty20. “The Twenty20 World Cup is going to be huge and international Twenty20 cricket is going to become bigger and bigger,” Flintoff said. “While I’m out there I’ll be watching the likes of Dhoni, who has played a lot of it, and Hayden who had a good IPL last year. I will be speaking to a few of the Indian guys and see if I can pick their brains.

“I think you’ll find players helping each other out and talking to each other, but the flip side of that is that other sides have England team-mates so you have to be a bit cautious about what you’re saying. Ultimately, it’s all about playing for England and by passing on a bit of information about one of your players could be to the detriment of this team and that’s something you can’t do.”

Flintoff will play his first IPL match against the Mumbai Indians in Cape Town on April 18 before facing Pietersen’s Bangalore Royal Challengers in Port Elizabeth two days later. He can play up to seven IPL games before returning to England.

Source: Flintoff hopes to gain from IPL ahead of big summer

In his column for the Hindustan Times, Gavaskar termed Buchanan a “failed former cricketer making a living telling international players to do what he couldn’t do”. It has not gone down well with the IPL franchise, which last week tried to put a lid on the controversy generated by Buchanan’s theory of multiple captains by releasing a statement that during a game the team would resort to a group of “strategists” who would report to one on-field captain while making decisions.

Khan has come to Buchanan’s defence, saying there was a marked difference in the time Gavaskar played and now. “I respect Mr Gavaskar – his knowledge about cricket is a billion times better than me,” Khan told reporters in Mumbai. “But this is an era where Mr Gavaskar has not indulged in; nevertheless his knowledge about the game does allow him to make comments.

“This is a new format that’s being tried out. Please give it some breathing space. I am the owner of the team, I bought it. If he wants to implement something, let him buy a team.”

Gavaskar was scathing of Buchanan in his column, saying the former Australian coach had a way with words in India, a country Gavaskar said had few people capable of defusing opinion makers. “To comment on his multiple skipper theory is to give it the importance it doesn’t deserve but what does require comment is how he has got his Queensland pals lucrative jobs with KKR,” wrote Gavaskar. “They have a very big support staff which includes his son and most of them are from Queensland. The owners – poor souls – have little idea that they are being milked.”

Gavaskar also said the Indian media granted unwarranted importance to Buchanan. “In India, where the media lives by the sound bite, Buchanan is a regular. If the Indian media had not made him out to be a ‘super coach’, he would have been just another failed former cricketer making a living telling international players to do what he couldn’t at the first-class level,” he wrote.

Buchanan’s radical theory had stirred a controversy on the eve of the team’s departure to South Africa, forcing a nearly four-hour long meeting between Buchanan, Sourav Ganguly, Khan and Jai Mehta, who owns a stake in the team, in Mumbai. A subsequent statement released by Kolkata stressed that there would be only one captain, who would be fed with suggestions from this core group of strategists.

Source: Shah Rukh Khan lashes back at Gavaskar

He has been replaced by the 26-year-old South African left-arm fast bowler Yusuf Abdulla, who made an impressive Twenty20 debut against Australia last week.

The news of Taylor pulling out comes as a blow to the franchise, which has already lost the services of their most successful bowler from the previous season, Sreesanth, due to a back injury. Also, one of their most expensive players, Australian fast bowler Brett Lee, is recovering from a foot injury, and has not played any cricket this year.

Ness Wadia, the Kings XI owner, said having South African players in the squad will be “critical” to success in the second season because they know the conditions well. He cited that as one of the reasons for signing up Abdulla. “We will be playing six matches in Durban, which is Abdulla’s home ground,” he told reporters via telephone, “and he knows the ground better than anybody.”

Abdulla has played 26 Twenty20 matches, and his economy rate of 5.83 ranks among the best in the world.

Source : Injury forces Jerome Taylor out of IPL

The IPL had announced the sale of online tickets for the second season in South Africa with the tickets for the first two matches priced between R 50 for students to R 200/150 for the grand stands, inclusive of the opening ceremony. Kingsmead in Durban hosts 16 games, the most for a single venue, and the tickets are priced between R 25 for students to R 150 for the grand stands.

The organisers have focused on making the tickets affordable in order to attract youngsters to the event. The tournament had to be moved out of India due to the general elections in the country.

The prices are relatively cheaper in the smaller venues like East London, Port Elizabeth, Kimberley and Bloemfontein, ranging between R 10 and R 75.

Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, was extremely happy with the way ticket sales had progressed for the inaugural double-header weekend. “A sellout crowd at the Sahara Park Newlands would be a dream start for the 2009 season and I would like to thank the fans for all their support,” he said. “I hope fans all around the Rainbow Nation and from India continue to display their solidarity and acceptance of the Indian Premier League in this manner. I look forward to an exciting season of cricket and entertainment in the days to come.”

“We had promised our fans in the Rainbow Nation of a non-stop cricket carnival and the attractive ticket pricing. I think should be a huge impetus for fans to come and see some of the best cricketing talent in the world, display their prowess on the field.”

Fans can buy tickets at the official website www.computicket.com.

Source: Tickets for inaugural double-header sold out

Nicholls admitted that moving the tournament to South Africa was a good option from the security point of view because the situation in India had made it “very difficult ” to host the event there. Besides, Nicholls said they were not able to conduct a final assessment of the situation in India for the IPL because of the delays in final decisions.

“We were waiting for the feedback from the Indian government about what resources could be made available,” Nicholls told Cricinfo. “There were a lot of delays caused in getting a decision, but we believe that it is a positive sign that those delays were caused because of the desire to keep security first. We were very aware of the fact the security measures that were provided had to be of the highest standards and there were many discussions to see if those required standards could be provided with the other things that were going in India at time.”

The IPL’s security template in South Africa will borrow significantly from the World Twenty20 model and the plan during India’s tour of South Africa in 2006 as well as other international tours and events. The South African agency has enormous expertise in providing security to teams and players and is also the ICC’s security consultant. They were roped in by the IPL last year as their central player-security managers.

“From the cricketing perspective, it is obviously disappointing [to shift the IPL] because everyone would’ve liked the event to happen in India,” Nicholls said. “But the situation and timing make it impossible to host it there, so from our perspective if it is not going to be in India then we believe that South Africa is a good choice.”

Asked whether the firm was confident of providing security in India without central security forces, as the IPL had claimed in a letter to the Indian government, Nicholls said, “It is a difficult question to answer because while we may be told that we do not have central forces, we needed to assess what forces are then actually going to be available. We knew what had to be done and everyone at the IPL agreed that player security was an absolute priority but obviously we didn’t know exactly what the situation was until the decision came from the government.”

In South Africa, though, time is the major challenge, Nicholls said. “There is not much time to put everything together. The good thing is South Africa hosted the Twenty20 World Cup in the recent past as well as other large tournaments so there is good history of doing that. We would have certainly liked longer duration for planning but that is just the way it is – we have an X amount of time to do it and we have got to get things in place in the time available. Fortunately we have an experienced team who know what has to be done and have done it before.”

Nicholls declined to reveal numbers, in terms of security personnel employed, but confirmed that he would be working together with the South African government. Bangalore Challengers take on Deccan Chargers in Cape Town on April 22, election-day in South Africa, and Nicholls said that he understood that the matter of holding the game on that particular day had been discussed at the “highest” level.

“That was something which has been discussed at a very high level,” Nicholls said. “It was a concern, but from my understanding it has been discussed with the South African government and their input was taken into account in planning the schedule.”

The crime rate in cities like Johannesburg, which hosts eight IPL matches, Nicholls admitted, was something that would be taken into consideration. “Some countries have a higher terrorism threat and a low crime rate and in others it is reverse where the crime rate is higher,” he said. “Certainly the crime rate is something that has to be taken in consideration for any major event that happens in South Africa.”

Source: IPL security agency faces time crunch

Henderson can scarcely believe the course of events that culminated in him receiving the fourth highest contract of the 2009 IPL auction behind Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and JP Duminy. When he first took the field for Border in 1998, Twenty20 cricket had yet to be conceived. And since his one and only international for South Africa – a 20-over match against India in which he was run out for a second-ball duck, and conceded 0 for 31 from his four overs – Henderson has found his niche at an age when many cricketers have opted for the pipe and slippers.

“When I started ten years ago I couldn’t have dreamed of anything like this happening,” Henderson told Cricinfo. “It’s like, ‘Wow, how did this happen?’ [The IPL contract] did come as a bit of a shock at the time, but it has all settled in now. If you look at my stats in Twenty20 they aren’t too bad, and there were obviously some teams out there who thought I could do a job for them. I’m confident I can do that and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

Henderson underlined his all-round potency during Middlesex’s charge to the Twenty20 title last season. His 21 wickets at 16.61 and 281 runs at 40.14 were vital to the county’s cause, and his thumping innings of 77 from 41 deliveries in Middlesex’s Pro Arch Trophy victory over Yorkshire last month suggested that, at 34, Henderson’s skills are not in decline.

“The Twenty20 format suits me down to the ground,” he said. “You have four overs to bowl, and they’re usually in powerplays or at the death, so they’re always interesting. And I’m happy to bat up or down the order, and like to get on with it once I’m in.

“I’m a Kolpak player now, and for me it was a bit of a no-brainer. I didn’t get much of an opportunity in the South African side. I played one Twenty20 international against India, and to be honest, I was surprised when I got the call-up. I wasn’t in the best nick at the time, and I didn’t really do much. I’ve had a good couple of years since at domestic level.”

IPL franchises concur. One of the lesser credentialed players at the 2009 auction, Henderson sold for $550,000 above his reserve price at a time when most teams were hunting for bargains.

“I tried to follow [the auction] online,” he said. “I was on my laptop and my wife was on another … [and] then I got a call from someone over there saying that Rajasthan had paid $650,000. It was a pretty amazing day.”

Rajasthan’s purchase seemed all the thriftier when the IPL announced that, due to security concerns in India, it would shift its 2009 operations to England or South Africa. Henderson, who has lived and played in both countries, believes his knowledge of South African conditions will benefit his franchise.

“It does give me more confidence,” he said. “I know all the grounds pretty well and have played on them all on numerous occasions. We have Graeme Smith and Morne Morkel in our team, so I’m sure we’ll be able to provide a few insights into the local conditions along the way. They will probably tap our knowledge a little bit closer to the tournament. At the moment they’ve got so many logistical issues to sort out and I don’t think local pitch conditions are a big concern for them at the moment.”

Source: Henderson still pinching himself after pay-day