Inaugural Champions League T20 Cricket tournament

The inaugural edition of the Champions league T20 tournament has come to an end with Australian New South Wales team winning the finals. Some thoughts on the tournament.

The hype surrounding the IPL and its franchise teams has been unfounded as not one of the three Indian teams could get into the semi-finals.

Foreign teams that we Indians may not have known of until before this tournament have shown how professional they are even at the shorter version of the game. Indian teams will take a few more years before they can claim to match such standards.

The West Indies team of Trinidad and Tobago has been the surprise package, at least to me. (I do not follow much of their cricket anyways). They have lifted the spirit of the tournament, in my opinion, through their splendid performances. The way they batted, fielded and bowled- I really liked the team and in fact rooted for them to win in the finals. As a matter of fact they did not expect to perform this well either.

I am eager to know the figures to see how profitable the tournament has been. With no Indian team in the final legs of the tournament I suspect if there had been many viewers to the Star Cricket channel.

Its only the first year but I think I have become a big fan of this format. For the format to catch up faster with the peoples of other countries I think there ought to exhibition matches between the various teams in each other's countries. This will introduce foreign teams to the local audiences during off-season.

All in all a very good concept with great potential to reach more and more people.