Champions' League t20 is a charade, not a competition

So the England tour, the most disastrous in my memory comes to a close to give way to the mindless hitting of t20.And knowing how the BCCI works, once an IPL team wins this tournament- given that there are 4 IPL teams the odds are high- everything will be construed to be glorious about Indian cricket and any criticism or suggested measure of improvement will be nipped in the bud. The public also tend to fall for this misleading portrayal of the health of Indian cricket. But blogs are there to educate people through free speech, aren't they?



The first question which arises is whether this competition,which even borrows its name from the premier European club football championship, has any significance that justifies its being.The answer is a resounding no, if considered for anything other than filling the BCCI's coffers.Cricket,unlike football, is only played competitively by a handful of countries and even then the domestic t20 leagues are unequal in terms of quality and scale.Unlike the football championship which is organized by the UEFA, the big brother BCCI wields the stick in Clt20 daring anybody to fall out of line and be summarily removed from the tournament. Equal weightage is not given to all the domestic leagues. The whole thing is skewed towards an IPL team winning the competition and blaring the trumpets of the BCCI.



Football nowadays is a club-based sport where the major footballers play in different clubs of England, Spain, Germany, Italy which are as good as each other. But in cricket, most international players only participate in the IPL, thereby constituting the qualitative superiority of it and making this concept of Champions' League all the more redundant. Also, in football you can only play for one club unlike cricket where merceneries like Kieron Pollard ply their trade all over the world but ultimately favour the most lucrative one in CLt20. So you have players like Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo playing for Mumbai Indians and Channai Super Kings respectively, instead of their native Trinidad and Tobago, stripping the local flavour- which could have been the saving grace- of the competition. Things which work in football do not work in cricket and everybody should realize that the only reason this is still playing out is the money. The insatiable appetite of the Indian consumers for all things t20 should be apportioned the major responsibility as to why this farce continues. Fans of REAL cricket should atleast stop watching this, if not IPL. I have.



And hey, have you noticed the remedial properties of these t20 leagues? Players like Bhajji who had gone out with tenuous injuries are suddenly completely fit. Rather obfuscating, but I am waiting for Gambhir to declare himself fit. Who knows, even Zaheer may become match-fit for 2 weeks before slumping back to his perpetual injured status. So sad, Sehwag's team is out. It may baffle you, but you can't argue with the results.So ignore all those nay-sayers and malicious, cynical people and their fallacious arguments that these t20 leagues breed injuries.They cure them.



P.S: The last paragraph was satirical but you already knew that, right?