Saturday, March 22, 2008

We can ban English players too!

England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke has calmed fears top stars like Kevin Pietersen could be lured to the Indian Premier League.

The IPL and the rebel Indian Cricket League have attracted some of the biggest names in world cricket to play in their Twenty20 competitions.

The lucrative contracts on offer could be a temptation for England's centrally-contracted players.

But Clarke revealed he has an agreement with the Board of Control for Cricket in India which prevents the latter recruiting any such players without the ECB's permission.

"We have a contract with BCCI," Clarke said on Sky Sports 1.

"In that contract, they're not allowed to take any English players of any kind to play in IPL if there is no 'No Objection Certificate'."

Asked whether Pietersen could walk away from England to play in the IPL, Clarke insisted: "If he didn't get an NOC from England, he couldn't.

"IPL will not play any player who has not received an NOC."

Clarke would be powerless to prevent the likes of Pietersen joining the non-sanctioned ICL, although any player doing that could be barred from playing Test or county cricket in the future.

The ECB have already rejected the applications of five overseas players to play country cricket this season because they could not obtain NOCs from their home boards after joining the ICL.

"If they obtain a 'No Objection Certificate' from their home board then we're going to consider their cases," Clarke said of such players.

"If they can't then we won't."

He added: "I don't think we're telling players they can't earn a living. We're saying here are the rules in our country.

"Our job is to nurture, to protect and to develop cricket in England and Wales. We make those judgments as to how we go about doing that. We do so with clarity, legally.

"If people from other countries have different views as to how we're doing that, I'm sorry but they're not in our country.

"We'll run the game according to our regulations and our rules and we expect them to comply.

"We have no interest in seeing rogue leagues in other countries develop. We have no interest in seeing rogue leagues in our country develop."

Clarke is keen to revamp England's own domestic Twenty20 competition in order to compete with its Indian counterpart.

He is prepared to adopt a similar policy of recruiting top overseas stars, though is determined the majority of each team must remain England-qualified.

He said the question currently being debated was: "Does it make sense for us to change our qualification rules for that competition to make it an absolutely appointment-to-view, must-see spectator event, a world-class event?"

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