 97 international cricketers had registered themselves for the IPL auction list
for the third season of the tournament. This included 26 players from Pakistan,
apart from those from Ireland, Netherlands and even Canada. Zimbabwe had two representations
in Ray Price and Murray Goodwin, the latter a returnee from the ICL.
Earlier, there were also guys like Shane Bond, who recently retired
from Test cricket, Damien Martyn, Chris Cairns, Saqlain Mushtaq and Justin Kemp,
all having returned back from the ICL who were a part of the auction list.
This list was later sent to the respective IPL teams and based on what the
franchise's wish-list was, the 97 players have been pared down to 51 players
only. Rather surprisingly, this list does not contain any English players, because,
of the restrictions imposed by the English cricket board on the players. It
now remains to be seen whether the players will become a part of the IPL auction
list on a later date before the auctions actually begin.
The English players who had been a part of the list were Tim Bresnan, Anthony
McGrath, Eoin Morgan, Monty Panesar, Adil Rashid, Jonathan Trott, Usman
Afzaal and James Foster.
There was more controversy in store for the IPL. Chris Cairns name was
dropped from the list of players who had enlisted themselves for the IPL because
of his alleged involvement with match fixing in the Indian Cricket League (ICL).
Cairns and Dinesh Mongia had been banned by the league, but it was not
sure why such a step had been taken in 2008. The official reason that had come
out was that the two had hidden the extent of Cairns' injury in the tournament.
Now, it has come out that Cairns has decided to take legal action against the
IPL chief Lalit Modi over what he has termed as defamatory comments.
He has also said that these defamatory comments could end up jeopardising his
future. Carins' lawyer, Andrew Fitch-Holland, said, "Chris believes he
has no future in any form of the game. He feels he's been made a pariah. He
said to me today 'that's me finished in cricket for the next 30 years'. He's
devastated, he's angry. If the ICC are running cricket then surely they must
have some degree of control over this sort of behaviour."
Fitch-Holland has also said that it was not Cairns who had approached the IPL,
but Sundar Raman, the CEO of the IPL who had approached Cairns to free himself
for the IPL auctions.
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