ProCricket is all set to launch on July 2, 2004 here in the US. Players that have signed up include enigmatic Ajay Jadeja amongst a couple others from India and a number from the West indies, Pakistan, England, New Zealand. ‘Out-sourced’ players will make up about 30-40 % of each team with the rest coming from a growing pool of cricketers here in the US.
Aditya Bedekar has blogged about this:
the new americanized version of the game is set to launch on jul 2, taking advantage of the long weekend here in the states. here is a link to their official press release. what surprises me is the fact that the ICC is actually disowning the league. i think the new rules should be quite exciting, and certainly worth a try. basically, it essentially is removing the middle 25-30 overs of a one-day innings and leaving only the start and end fireworks. but unlike in baseball, where there is truly a competition between pitcher and batter (since batter gets three strikes, but has to run every time he hits the ball) - cricket is just too much batting firepower. ofcourse, its entertaining, but not enough competition between bat and ball. its only competition between batting of one team and the other. even those are not on the field at the same time.
…i certainly dont see proCricket hurting the sport - if at all, it might infuse some fresh and new ideas and hence better entertainment into the sport.
I’m fairly excited about this version of the game although I am skeptical about the dumbing down of the game. I have not yet read any of the rules of this new version in detail, mainly because of the lack of a detailed source at the Procricket.com website. I would have expected the official website to have more than the usual, “Information for this section will be made available shortly” for most of the links on their website. My other big crib is that their website is not at all Firefox friendly! 
But hey, if they give me a good 3 months of exciting cricket to watch, I sure won’t be complaining at the end of it!
Footnote: I can’t resist from wondering how much would it cost them to get Sachin Tendulkar to play in this league! 
Comments (2)
prashant,
the rules are available here . also the procricket.com link should actually link to http://www.procricket.com
Thanks aditya,
I was hoping to see the double play rule in there… but they didn’t seem to have included that…
So who are yu rooting for?
I havent seen the playing twelves yet so I dont know who Im going for… though most probably its going to be the Chicago Tornadoes!
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