Aus asks IPL to show 'common sense'

The Indian Premier League officials were asked to show common sense by the Australian Cricketers' Association on Monday and provide security plans with it so that the Australian players could be briefed accordingly regarding participation in the IPL in March.

The third edition of the Indian Premier League begins on March 6th, and is slated to be the most expensive yet. The Pakistani and most of the Australian players would not play in the tournament. Australian Cricketers' Association chief executive Paul Marsh told reporters that the Australian players do want to be a part of the Indian Premier League but the officials' policy of not sharing plans with the ACA was taking the matter towards a farcical situation. "We hope common sense prevails and the IPL provides us with access to these plans because if we are unable to assess the event's security plans, we simply won't be able to recommend to our players that we believe its safe to play in this year's IPL," Marsh said in an e-mail interview.

"Unfortunately this is turning into a farcical situation. The ACA and our players want the same thing as the IPL wants -- a safe and successful event," he said. "But despite requests from players' associations and the players themselves, the IPL is refusing to provide access to its security plans for this year's event," he added. "No decision has been made as to whether Australians will play in this year's IPL. The ACA is currently going through an information gathering process from which recommendations will be made to players as to whether or not we believe it is safe for them. This process also involves receiving advice from our government and independent security sources. It also involves assessing the security plans for the event," he said.

Even New Zealand Cricket Players' Association chief Heath Mills had stated that the Kiwi players were feeling frustrated with the IPL not sharing security plans with player associations. "We have already approached the IPL through FICA and Tim May and the players have written to their franchises. Unfortunately, the IPL will not engage us or work with us on the issue which is frustrating for us and the players," Mills had said. Players are coming to us for advice. However we cannot give them any quality advice at the moment about participating in the IPL as we have no information about the security situation or management plans," Mills added.

As we reported earlier the Indian Premier League can now be watched live on video sharing site YouTube. The search engine giant Google has partnered with the IPL, and YouTube would broadcast all the matches of the upcoming third season of the IPL.As per the deal, Google possesses the exclusive online rights for IPL content until 2012 and both Google and IPL will share revenues from sponsorships and advertising.