Gone fishing

Is it just me, or is there something insufferably pompous about the use of the word ‘amnesty’ in this context?

All it is, is the final phase of a classic squeeze play: ever since the ICL was founded, the BCCI has gone out of its way to hunt down and exterminate — professionally — anyone with the remotest connection to the ‘illegal’ league, in the process abrogating to itself all rights to the game.

This ‘amnesty’ is the final move. Having made life impossible for the league and all those who signed on, the BCCI opened up this escape hatch and went, ‘Hello, rats, ship going under for the third time, you want out?’

What is a player to do — especially when, at least in part owing to the BCCI squeeze, the ICL no longer even has the money to pay them for their efforts?

79 players have jumped ship, as have a couple of dozen administrators, coaches and such. Jason Gillespie — who, for his trouble, was blocked from coaching the Aussie quicks — is sad. John Buchanan is not — ICL, he reckons, is a promising pond, from whose depths he can fish up some talent to shore up the breach in the KKR lineup.

Having done that, he hopefully won’t send them packing — as he did with Aakash Chopra and Sanjay Bangar ahead of IPL-2.

“I said right from the outset that we were short of quality Indian top-order batsmen and that is still the case,” Buchanan told Cricinfo. “The ICL has released quite a few players in the last little while. There are quite a lot of good, young Indian batsmen among them and I think that is a situation that could work well for KKR.

Two words. One name. Srivats Goswami. Didn’t want him in the Kolkatta lineup, did you?