ICL needs players with Twenty20 skills - Law

While much has been said about the big names the Indian Cricket League has signed on or is signing, its success as a cricketing venture will depend more on the other players it gets on board - the players who will, simply put, produce good Twenty20 cricket. Brian Lara could pull in the crowd but he doesn't have expertise either in the Twenty20 format or in Indian conditions.

Stuart Law, the former Australian one-day batsman, is one of the names doing the rounds as a prospective ICL player. He isn't very well-known in India but has strong Twenty20 credentials. Law, who now plays for Lancashire, told Cricinfo he wasn't aware of being on the ICL scouts' list but is willing to join the league, if made an offer, since he is not affiliated with any country. "My contract with Lancashire is up at the end of this season and it [ICL] might be something that fits really well with me," Law said. "It is appealing to me because I haven't played enough international cricket at that level and it's a chance for me to test my skills in foreign conditions."

Other cricketers on the fringes of international cricket believe that playing alongside Brian Lara, and possibly Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, will allow them to test their skills at the highest level. A current Indian one-day middle-order batsman, who refused to be named because of the Indian board's threat to bar any player associated with the ICL, said cricketers wanted to play at the highest level irrespective of the money. "[This] will be a platform for players who never had a chance to play against the likes of a Warne, or a McGrath or a Lara and see 'where I stand in life'," he said.

It could also, he said, benefit younger players who are yet to experience the adrenaline of an international dressing-room.

That view was echoed, to an extent, by a former India fast bowler contacted by the ICL, who said playing with Lara and the others would be a learning process for him. "I will be in elite company and being around them will be a learning process," he said. "They've played at the highest level and listening to them would be a big thing."

As of now, most of the players linked to the ICL are retired, semi-retired, or are those who can't hold down their place in the national side. It is acknowledged by many that Twenty20 is a power game meant for younger and fitter players, so there is a view that the ICL is barking up the wrong tree.

But Law, 38, disagrees. He feels that it is the players with maximum experience in playing Twenty20 who can quickly pass on their knowledge of the game to those who haven't played it at all. "You need names to promote [ICL] and get people interested," Law said "but you also need players who have played a bit of it [Twenty20] to give everybody an idea of how to play it correctly."

Officials at the ICL are tight-lipped about the signings, and with the BCCI keeping the domestic players in check, it is of little use speculating. But if those at the ICL can find the right mix of the agile and the capable, the modern and the classic, then it will have its most important nuts and bolts in place for a smooth beginning.