Retired cricketing legends to feature in CCL 2017

The Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) is on the course of making some huge changes to their playing format and roping in International Cricketers for its 7th edition which will be held in January-February, 2017. If things go as expected, India might witness the Hong Kong Sixes like tournament next year with International Cricketers playing alongside film stars of various regions.

The six teams in the league, each of them representing a film industry will be taking part in the upcoming season in the Hong Kong Sixes tournament format, according to which six players of a team filled with three film stars and three cricketers will be featured in a game. (The Hong Kong sixes was a prominent 6-a-side tournament which included international sides held in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Cricket Club once in every year since 1992. Due to lack of sponsors, the tournament was scrapped in 2012.)

Founder of the CCL, Mr. Vishnu Vardhan Induri has spoken about the new format of CCL recently. He has also told that the retired internationals, Virender Sehwag, Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Jonty Rhodes, Andrew Symonds, Daniel Vettori, Kumar Sangakkara and Zaheer Khan have confirmed their participation.

Vishnu Vardhan, a serial entrepreneur from Hyderabad, has also revealed that Telugu Warriors team matches will be played on 28th and 29th of January next year. The Telugu Warriors team is Hyderabad franchise based side, the defending champions of CCL as they won the previous two editions of the tournament. The games of announced dates are supposed to be played at either Hyderabad or Vijayawada as India will be taking on Bangladesh in February at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad.

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The CCL had set new benchmarks in revenues and viewership by every season over the last six years. Each season of the tournament was played on weekends in Jan-Feb of every year ever since its inauguration in 2011. The tournament has been played in International venues in India like Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Ranchi. Occasionally, they played at the Sharjah and Dubai stadiums as well.

Given CCL has been a tournament including film stars over the years, it might not face problems like Masters Champions League (MCL) which was inaugurated earlier this year. MCL was always around controversies as many cricketers announced their retirement in an eye of the tournament to meet the requirement to play in it after been rejected for an NOC from their respective country’s Boards for the same.