Indian Wrangles Put Counties' T20 Role at Risk

The English counties' participation in the inaugural club Twenty20 Champions League was thrown into further confusion last night when Indian officials emerged from a meeting in Mumbai giving conflicting versions of whether the counties will be allowed to take part.

The ECB announced with great drum-banging a fortnight ago that agreement had been reached on an eight-team tournament involving two qualifying sides from India, England, Australia and South Africa. But tell that to the Indians - predictably, they are still hell-bent upon political dissembling.

Niranjan Shah pronounced last night that Pakistan had already been invited to replace England in the tournament and that English counties had been banned because of their policy of allowing players from the unofficial Indian Cricket League to play in county cricket.

But that response was at odds with a briefing from IS Bindra, an influential member of the Indian Premier League's governing council. He told the cricket website Cricinfo: "As of now, three countries are confirmed: India, South Africa and Australia. Pakistan may be the fourth, but first we have to get a response from the ECB on the ICL issue. Teams from England can be considered, but only those who don't have players associated with ICL."

The saga will be addressed at a meeting of the ICC's executive committee in Dubai later this month. Australia have been charged with drawing up the rules for the tournament, including those on eligibility, according to the ECB. But the Indian Board's attitude is that it is their party and they can do whatever they want.

Only three English counties have no ICL players - Somerset, Essex and Middlesex - and the ECB would withdraw from the tournament rather than accept the banning of any county. To punish the ECB would be a nonsense as they did seek India's request to bar ICL players from county cricket but had to abandon the policy because of legal threats and the lack of backing from other nations, including Pakistan, Australia and South Africa.

The compromise pursued by the ECB from the outset, and which the ECB chairman Giles Clarke believed had been agreed with India, is that ICL players will be barred from the Champions League, but not the counties. But an Indian cricket official's "yes" on a Monday is a "no" on a Tuesday. A country that now presumes to run the world game will only run it well when it adopts mature business practice.