ICL to kick off on November 30

After an intense recruitment drive, the rebel Indian CricketLeague on Tuesday announced the dates and the venue for its high profileinaugural edition of the Twenty20 championship.The League, whichwill have West Indies batting great Brian Lara and some other recently retiredinternational cricketers as its star attraction, will be held in Panchkula,Chandigarh, from November 30 to December 16.The tournament, to beplayed at Tau Devi Lal Cricket Stadium, will have 20 matches in all and willcarry prize money of $1 million.The dates and venue were finalisedat the ICL's Executive Board meeting here, giving the rebel body a head startover the BCCI's proposed Indian Premier League, which is scheduled to be held inApril next year.The tournament, a brainchild of SubhashChandra-owned Essel Group, will have 20 matches, which includes 15 round robinmatches and five classification ties.The Grand Final preceded bythree classification matches will be played on December 16."The ICLTwenty20 championship will be held as promised, later next month at Chandigarh.We are working hard to deliver a very exciting tournament for the viewers. I amconfident that the public in this country will witness for the first time afully professionally organised cricket extravaganza," ICL chairman Kapil Devsaid.Pakistan's Abdul Razzaq, Imran Farhat and Azhar Mahmood, SouthAfricans Lance Klusener and Nicky Boje and New Zealand's Chris Cairns, ChrisHarris, Nathan Astle, Hamish Marshal and Darren Maddy of England are some of theother foreign players who have signed up for ICL.Dinesh Mongia,Reetinder Singh Sodhi, JP Yadav, Deep Dasgupta, Nilesh Kulkarni, S Sriram, TKumaran, Ambati Rayudu, Mihir Diwakar, Rakesh Patel, Kiran Powar are the topdomestic players who will be seen in action.Former Pakistan captainInzamam-ul-Haq and prolific batsman Mohammad Yousuf had initially signed for theICL, but canceled their contracts and have now aligned with the IPL, which isseen as a counter to the breakaway league.The ICL has not got therecognition of the International Cricket Council or its affiliatedmembers.Soon after the ICL announced its plans to stage the Twenty20tournament, the BCCI launched its own Twenty20 venture with the support ofseveral Test playing nations and offered hefty prize money to lure topcricketers to its fold.