Finally, inter-state T20 gets off the ground

INDORE: Syed Mushtaq Ali will finally gets his due when the first ball is bowled in his hometown on Monday in the inter-state T20 cricket championship.
During the last two seasons the whole tournament, named after the legendary cricketer, was scrapped by the Board of Control for Cricket in Indian (BCCI) at the request of the IPL franchisees as it was too close to the start of the season.
This move, however, had not gone down well with the family members of the legendary opening batsman, who himself would have given a thumbs-up to the format, knowing his panache for unorthodox strokeplay.
The domestic T20 championship has had a chequered run in the short period it has been around. In the inaugural edition in 2006-07, it was merely known as the inter-state T20 championship which Tamil Nadu had won defeating Punjab in the final played at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai, in April 2007.
After the BCCI decided to name it after Mushtaq Ali, it was cancelled twice because of the cash-rich IPL. This year, to avoid any such problems, it has been scheduled, at least the zonal phase, at the start of the season, with the knockout slated in early March next year, well before IPL 3. Hopefully, this year, we will see the tournament going all the way.
From Tuesday, four zonal leagues get underway at four different venues across the country - Central Zone at Indore, West Zone at Pune, North at Delhi and East at Dhanbad. The top two teams will qualify for the knockout, to be played from March 12 to 16. The ill-timed South Zone league is already over. Played in late September at Vizag, it was badly hit by rains as 9 of the 15 matches had to be abandoned. In whatever limited opportunities the teams got, Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad qualified for the knockout.
Despite being a popular format, it remains to be seen how much interest this domestic T20 tournament generates. It will be played under the shadow of the Champions League, which itself is struggling to find a place under the sun after the three IPL teams were knocked out well before the semifinal stage.
Nonetheless, some of the teams have much at stake. For example, Uttar Pradesh, who have a bunch of talented lads, led by Mohammed Kaif, will be desperate to erase the memories of 2007 when in the Central Zone league at Jaipur, they finished a poor fourth, winning only against lowly Vidarbha.
Railways and Madhya Pradesh had qualified for the knockout, with Rajasthan missing the berth on net run rate. UP, despite the absence of Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar and Sudeep Tyagi, who all will be busy with the ODI series against Australia, start as favourites, as still they have lot of talented players at their disposal. Kaif, who himself has loads of experience, will have the services of Rudra Pratap Singh, Piyush Chawla, Tanmay Srivastava and Shivakant Shukla.