April 22, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 15, 1429

MELBOURNE, April 21: Next year’s edition of the Indian Premier League runs the risk of missing players from Australia and Pakistan who are scheduled to feature in five One-dayers and a Twenty20 match to be played at the same time.

To make up for its abandoned tour of Pakistan this year on security concerns, Cricket Australia on Monday announced a new schedule, which has them playing the ODIs and the Twenty20 match next year before returning to the country for a three-match Test series in 2010.

There is no ambiguity about what should be the priority of the players. “Our players will be required to go to Pakistan,” a Cricket Australia spokesman told Australian Associated Press here.

CA operations manager Michael Brown made it clear that the Future Tours Program would prevail over the cash-rich Twenty20 extravaganza. “It’s a very difficult discussion. We often talk about programming like chess being played in three dimensions, there are a number of factors to be considered,” Brown said.

”At this stage, we have a programme that goes through to 2011-12, from there the ICC is preparing the Future Tours Programme from that point. The difficulty is, there are so many different groups who would want to be involved in such programmes.”

”The bread and butter of cricket is based around the FTP and we need to make sure that’s protected,” Brown said.

The CA official, however, admitted the IPL has got off to a splendid start and he was more than impressed. “It’s been outstanding, I think someone described it as like the Olympic Games last night. It’s fantastic for cricket - we’re here in Melbourne in an incredible AFL (Australian Football League) environment, yet people are taking up cricket.

”That’s a real positive for the game and the little bits I’ve caught from our players, it’s been very successful. It’s a great credit to the BCCI and the people involved,” Brown said.—Agencies