Saturday, December 13, 2008

Champions League T20 put off

The inaugural Champions League Twenty20 has been pushed back by a year and will now be held in India in October 2009, the window originally identified for the tournament's second edition.This decision comes as a huge disappointment for the teams who were looking forward to the tournament and also to the millions of fans across the globe. This tournament created so much hype and it was gathering momentum just when some unfortunate things happened in Mumbai, one of the proposed venues. The participating teams had a lot riding on it as they would been guaranteed a purse of US$250,000 as participating fees from the total pot of US$6 million. Moreover those who had qualified for this year's edition have got to do it all over again in their respective T20 tournament as the next year's edition will have a fresh set of qualifying teams. Many of the boards have lost a lot of money due to this but this was a sensible decision keeping in mind the horrors that happened last month. It is likely the tournament will now have more teams - possibly up to 12 from the eight slotted for this year - next year's Twenty20 domestic finalists from India, Australia and South Africa will definitely take part with the other participating teams will being finalized by the end of January 2009.

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