Improving the image of Indian football

One wonders why the All India football Federation (AIFF) took all of a dozen years to apply a concrete structure to a tattered National Football League (NFL) and make it I-League. Come to think of it, the federation didn’t have any set goals. NFL was conceived and implemented in a flash. The federation may have eyed a broader representation but somehow it was limited only to a few traditional football pockets.

One of the biggest bane is that talent flow has come from only one academy – Tata Football Academy. The AIFF has been guilty on this count, they have hardly encouraged any academies to set up shop.

While the I-League still flip-flops between a 10 or a 12-team format with national coach Bob Houghton as the guiding force, the event could still have expanded with more teams. Though the India coach talked about a 20-team EPL-like format, it seems to be nothing more than just

Source / Reference : http://sports.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3510739.cms

Kenya cricket crying out for help

Nairobi: There are no funds. Cricketers are becoming rarer. The government is not interested. The international community doesn’t seem to care much. Welcome to Kenyan cricket.

Five years after stunning the cricket world by making the cut for the 2003 World Cup semi-finals in South Africa, Kenyan cricket is crying out for help.

“We need to play against stronger teams,” Kenya captain Steve Tikolo told IANS here at the Nairobi Gymkhana. “We have some talented youngsters but they desperately need exposure,” added the veteran all-rounder, who is still serving as the backbone of his country’s national side.

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Steve’s elder brother Tom – serving as Cricket Kenya’s chief executive – was more vocal about the lack of support for Kenya cricket by the cricket world. He stressed that the International Cricket Council (ICC) will have to do more if it wanted to save cricket in Kenya.

“We are under-funded and feel completely ignored,” Tom said. “The ICC is giving us a grant but it’s far from enough. The government help is non-existent while sponsorship is scarce. We are looking towards the international cricket community for support,” he stressed.

The Kenyans surprised the cricket world by reaching the World Cup last-four in 2003 but since then the graph of their performance has taken a nose dive.

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They have to feature in the ICC World Cup qualifiers for the 2011 spectacle next April but are lacking in confidence ahead of the 12-nation event which will see the top four making the cut for the quadrennial spectacle to be hosted by Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

In the ongoing series against the visiting Pakistan Academy, Kenya have looked quite ordinary and Steve blames it on lack of exposure.

“We need to play more competitive games. We have to play against stronger sides otherwise it is going to be very difficult to bring any improvement in our performance,” he added.

Tom said that lack of funds and a dearth of matches against stronger teams have pushed Kenyan cricket backward.

He revealed that Cricket Kenya needs at least $1.2 million to run the sport professionally in the country but there is a shortfall of around $500,000. Kenya gets $450,000 from the ICC, $150,000 from TV rights and $100,000 from a newly-acquired sponsorship from a local company Tusker.

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“What we get currently is just not enough,” he said. “Kenya doesn’t have a cricket culture which is why we badly need a proper schools structure to find new players and that is not possible without proper funding.”

Asked why the Kenyan government was not backing cricket in the country, Tom said: “The government says it is struggling to fund campaigns against HIV Aids so how can it give money to cricket”.

“We would have become a Test side long ago if we had some big brothers,” he said referring to Bangladesh’s ascent to the Test arena with the support of Asian powers India and Pakistan. “Just before Bangladesh became a Test side we were beating them hollow and now we are nowhere in world cricket,” he lamented.

Tom is also unhappy with the lack of support shown to Kenyan cricket by neighbours South Africa and Zimbabwe – the only two Test teams from Africa.

“South Africa haven’t visited Kenya in three years in spite of our repeated request while Zimbabwe last came here in 2005. It is really frustrating,” he concluded.

Source / Reference: http://sify.com/sports/

Cricket: Stage set for repeat of massive failure

By Dylan Cleaver

Here’s a brief history lesson.

The last time New Zealand toured Australia was 2004.

The build-up to the tour was a two-test jaunt to Bangladesh where they whipped the home side in two horribly lop-sided tests.

New Zealand were then thrashed in Australia. After a promising start in Brisbane, fuelled by a brilliant Jacob Oram century, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie both posted half centuries against a wilting attack and New Zealand crashed to a paltry 76 in the second innings, the only fight demonstrated by Craig McMillan who engaged in a ill-advised war of words with Adam Gilchrist that ended when he was dismissed next ball.

At Adelaide they simply never showed up with the most hostile spell of the tour being delivered by Ian Butler in the nets.

All-and-all, an ignominious series.

Fast forward four years and New Zealand are again preparing to play tests at the Gabba – the toughest venue in Australia since the WACA lost its sting – and the Adelaide Oval on the back of a two-test series in Bangladesh. Not just any old series but, as a bonus, a watered-down one featuring a Bangladesh team decimated by the recent ICL raid.

There’s a term for this and it reads something like “being set up for a fall”.

None of this is New Zealand Cricket’s fault. They are not India and cannot pick and choose what bits of the FTP they want to adhere to.

They were hurt too, by the fact they lost six weeks of cricket in Pakistan, mthough that would have been of the limited overs variety.

But surely NZC could have arranged more than one warm-up first-class match in Australia – oh, that’s right, New Zealand’s best players see warm-up matches as optional extras, to be playedonly if they can be squeezed in around IPL schedules (and we saw how well that worked in England).

Here’s another parallel they would do well to remember: New Zealand played just one first-class warm-up before the 2004 test against New South Wales in Sydney. Snap.

So their on-field preparation will be sketchy – all the more important to get their off-field prep spot-on.

According to multiple sources who have spoken to the Herald on Sunday, that has not happened.

Due largely to a massive and, in fairness, long overdue restructure of NZC, there has been a high-performance vacuum of sorts this winter.

What staff there are left have been pre-occupied with the Emerging Players and ‘A’ teams, leaving the full internationals pretty much to their own devices. Batting coach Mark O’Neill, who should, quite frankly, be the most over-worked man in New Zealand sport, said that last week’s clinics with the batsmen in Christchurch and the bowlers in Auckland was his first contact with the team since the tour to England.

Tim Southee, the most exciting cricketer produced within these shores for some years, had until last week had one session with a high-performance staffer.

Now these guys are pros, albeit in Southee’s case a very green one, and do not need their hands held, but this lack of hands-on coaching simply would not be happening in other top-tier cricket nations. England wouldn’t do it, South Africa wouldn’t do it, Australia wouldn’t do it.

Australia – New Zealand are playing them in less than two months.

Has anybody told you what happened the last time New Zealand toured there… ?

Reference :  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/