I will be fit for IPL: Andrew Flintoff

England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff (File photo)

England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff today (Feb 24) scotched speculation about his non-availability for the Indian Premier League, saying he will be fit before the second edition of the cash-rich event.

Flintoff sustained a hip injury recently and was ruled out of the fourth Test against the West Indies. ECB CEO Collier had said Flintoff may be stopped from appearing in the T20 League considering team's Ashes interest.

"I don't think it will be touch and go. The IPL's still a while away so for all intents and purposes I'll be fit for that. I'm intending to go but it's not really at the forefront of my thinking. I want to play Test cricket and I want to play the one-day internationals," Flintoff was quoted as saying by 'Daily Telegraph'.

Flintoff, who along with compatriot Kevin Pietersen grabbed a whopping USD 1.55 million contract with the IPL, also believes playing in the IPL will help England players prepare better for the T20 World Cup.

"It seems the (domestic) Twenty20 competitions always seem to fall between one-day and Test series. So as much Twenty20 cricket going into that World Cup will obviously benefit the side.

"You see how the Indians have gone it's had a knock-on effect in one-day internationals. Obviously financially it's great. But to further our game and get better in that form of the game it's important we go," he said.

ICL mulls legal action over recognition

ICL boss Kapil Dev (file photo)

India's rebel Twenty20 league is considering legal action after failing in the latest bid for recognition because of staunch opposition by the Indian board, former India skipper Kapil Dev said on Wednesday (February 25).

The International Cricket Council (ICC) was unsuccessful in its bid to end a dispute between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Indian Cricket League (ICL) after a meeting held in Johannesburg on Monday proved fruitless.

"As a sportsman, I don't like matters of sport being decided in court, but with the talks failing (again), we may have no choice but to take recourse to law," Kapil Dev, chairman of the Indian Cricket League (ICL), told The Telegraph newspaper.

"I can't understand who has given the BCCI the right to be the sole authority for promoting cricket in India ... The ICL too is doing just that, so why should our boys be punished? That, to me, is not justice."

The ICL's application to be recognised as unofficial cricket would now be discussed at the ICC Board meeting in April.

The ICL, bankrolled by one of India's largest media firms, launched the league following India's triumph in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in 2007.

It signed overseas players, particularly from Pakistan, New Zealand and Bangladesh.

However the BCCI, concerned the league would undermine its position, refused to recognise it and persuaded other national boards to ban players who signed up.

India start Kiwi tour with a loss

Suresh Raina's fighting unbeaten 61 went in vain as world champions India began their New Zealand tour on a dismal note with the hosts thrashing them by seven wickets in the first Twenty20 match on Wednesday. Put into bat, India recovered from a mid-innings slump to post a competitive 162 for eight but that proved insufficient as the Kiwis overhauled the target with seven balls to spare.

Brendon McCullum (56 not out), Martin Guptill (41), Ross Taylor (31) and Jacob Oram (29 not out) were the notable performers for the hosts who have taken a 1-0 lead in the two match T20 series.India started off with a flourish but failed to sustain the tempo to find themselves in trouble at 61 for five by the eighth over. Some lusty hitting by Raina and Harbhajan Singh (21) at the end provided some respectability to the total.

Raina and Harbhajan Singh stitched 61 runs for the eighth wicket, the highest partnership in the innings. Teen sensation Ishant Sharma struck in the first ball of his first over, trapping left-handed Jesse Ryder (1) to give India the kind of start they needed.

Slumdog' kids Ismail and Rubina gifted flats

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ child actors Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Rafiq can now leave the squalor of their slum homes, courtesy the Maharashtra government which on Tuesday night announced that both would be given a flat each.

Azharuddin Ismail Shaikh Usman and Rubina Rafiq Asghar Ali Qureshi are residents of Garib Nagar slum in Bandra East, Mumbai. They played the youngest version of the lead characters in the Oscar-winning film and were flown to the US for Hollywood's biggest awards ceremony on Sunday.

Chief minister Ashok Chavan announced gifting the two a flat each from the chief minister's quota.

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ won eight Oscars at the 81st annual Academy Awards -- almost following the fairytale journey of its hero in the movie.

The Mumbai unit of the Congress party had approached chief minister Ashok Chavan on Tuesday evening on the matter.

Rubina's father Rafiq is a casual carpenter while Azharuddin's father Ismail trades in old furniture.

TCS cries foul on Wipro's ESIC deal

The country's biggest IT services vendor, TCS, is up in arms against a Rs 1200-crore ESIC (Employees State Insurance Corporation) ord
er bagged by rival Wipro. According to a business daily, the Mumbai-based company has complained to the government about how the contract, which is the biggest software purchase involving the exchequer, was awarded to Wipro.

ESIC, a Union government agency that provides health insurance to over 10 million workers in the country, had invited bids for its Panchdeep project, designed to streamline registration filings and payouts at its 144 hospitals and 50 regional centres.

ESIC called for two tenders for the project within a span of three months after the first round was rejected by it. TCS was among the three bidders to the contract, where Wipro was selected winner by ESIC on the basis of the lowest bid, in the second round of the tender process earlier this month.

The first tender was floated in October last year and financial bids were opened in November. TCS, which reportedly offered to execute the project for Rs 1,677 crore, was the lowest bidder compared with a Rs 1,890 crore quote by Wipro and a Rs 2,100 crore bid made by Infosys Technologies Ltd.

However, ESIC decided to cancel that tender round because, as per a corporation official, who according to the publication did not want to be identified, the bids of Wipro and Infosys were found to be defective and the agency did not want to go with the lone bidder left, TCS, even though the Tata firm was the lowest bidder in the round.

But a senior TCS executive insists that that his company was verbally told that the bid was rejected because it did not include service tax (of 12.36% on certain components of its offer). Later, when the company asked for a clarification, ESIC wrote back that all bids would have to include service tax, the executive added.

TCS then complained to the labour ministry saying that it believed its bid then was within the terms of the tender.

Earlier this month, when the second round tender bids were opened, Wipro emerged the lowest bidder with a quote of Rs 1,181 crore (37% less than its previous bid), TCS quoted Rs 1,530 crore (8.77% lower than its earlier bid) and Infosys Rs 1,791 crore (14.71% less).

The Wipro offer, according to TCS official too did not include service tax and should not have been considered going by the reasons for the rejection of the TCS bid in November.

This has, however, been denied by ESIC’s director general who the daily quotes as saying that in the second round, the bidders have included a wide range of taxes, which included service, custom, excise, sales, VAT (value added tax, octroi and any other leviable charges under the contract.

As they say, these are tough times where every penny counts, and so does every order