Champion League, Shmampions League

At the start of the tournament, it was perceived as an uneven match between international IPL teams and lesser-known other international-less teams. The IPL boasting 3 teams in the tournament (to boost their chances of winning I suppose) and then the top two teams in each country - England, South Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies, with the last two only represented by one team for some reason.

Many people believe that this is a money-making scheme dreamt up by Lalit Money (am I making it too obvious that I don't like him much?), while The Man himself wants us to believe that it is his way of ensuring the future of cricket. That's funny, because cricket was doing just fine before he started believing that he had the "Midas touch", but now we're allowing him to touch cricket.

In many countries that would be illegal.

Meanwhile, the Champions League is past the initial group stages. I wasn't fully aware of just how intricate the system was, but luckily I have CricInfo to help me out. I read it over and over, because nobody can look at the inside of a Swiss watch and understand it at first glance. If it wasn't for CricInfo, I would have been lost in the System:


"The team with the highest number of points at the end of the Group Stage shall finish 1st on the Group Points Table and the team with the lowsest shall finish 3rd."


The only thing I'm wondering about now is what about the team that ended with neither the highest number of points nor the lowerst number of points? I suspect that they are uncertain about this, because the ICC is still waiting for Australia to grant the members from the Board of Cricket Maladministration for Zimbabwe visas so that they can start discussing this matter.

And as the tournament comes closer to the end, there are no more semi final places left. Trinidad&Tobago, Cape Cobras, Victoria and New South Wales have taken up the four spots and as you can tell by the lack of IPL teams in the semi final slots, there are no IPL teams in the semi finals. I'm trying to care, but it's not happening.

As a South African, I'm hoping that the Cape Cobras take the tournament, but as a Cricket supporter, I really couldn't care less, because the IPL teams are out and therefore I have nobody to cheer against.