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In an attempt to address the worldwide scheduling dilemma facing cricket, the chief executive of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) asked for regular meetings between the leagues’ owners and administrators, labelling overlaps between them as “a nonsense”. Although the CPL and the Hundred have crossed paths in the past, they won’t collide this year because of discussions that were held earlier this year with the ECB.
In addition, Pete Russell, a co-founder of the CPL and the league’s CEO since 2021, thinks that regular cooperation between the T20 leagues should be the norm in order to reduce the frequency of disputes between them.
“[The ECB] have a defined window that they have to play in, and it happened that we could move everything out to ensure that we didn’t clash [with the Hundred],” Russell told ESPNcricinfo. “It makes absolutely zero sense if you’ve got [Sunil] Narine and [Andre] Russell having to fly back the day before the final of the Hundred. That’s in no one’s interests, and certainly not the Hundred’s.
“I hope that [collaboration] continues. It’s not rocket science; it’s what should happen with all leagues. It’s just a nonsense that we’ve got all this overlap when it just needs to be worked through. Scheduling is a challenge, I know, but it can’t be that you have two leagues going at each other at the same time. To my mind, it doesn’t make any sense.”
The first part of 2024 saw the simultaneous operation of multiple leagues. The BBL in Australia and the Super Smash in New Zealand concluded in the middle of January; the SA20 in South Africa and the ILT20 in the UAE began in January and continued into February; the Bangladesh Premier League began in January and concluded in March; and the Pakistan Super League took place in mid-February and ended in mid-March.
When the ICC Champions Trophy returns in February 2025, things are likely to get much more complicated. After recent talks with franchisees, the ILT20 is anticipated to announce its dates for 2025 in the coming days. Meanwhile, the PCB has declared that it will hold the PSL in April and May of 2025 in conjunction with the IPL.
“Unless the game can come together to find a system in which the domestic leagues and international cricket can co-exist, we will end up with two separate calendars running in parallel,” Moffat told ESPNcricinfo.