'Not rocket science': CPL CEO asks cricket boards to join hands to avoid clashing of T20 leagues

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The CEO of Caribbean Premier League (CPL) Pete Russell has asked the cricket boards to collaborate to make sure their T20 league do not clash with each other. His comments come in the wake of the step taken by Cricket West Indies (CWI) to avoid a clash of CPL with The Hundred this year after the two tournaments overlapped in recent years.

"[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]. 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," he said while speaking to ESPNCricinfo.

According to him, the scheduling overlap of T20 leagues is unacceptable when it can be avoided with regular meetings and communication between the boards. "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," Russell further added.

Notably, Pakistan Super League, SA20, International League T20 and Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) all clash at some point with each other from January to March every year. In fact, the matter is set to complicate even further with the scheduling of ICC Champions Trophy next year in mid-February window. The US-based T20 league MLC's schedule was released on May 7 (Tuesday) and it is clashing with the The Hundred for six days and the CEO of CPL cited the same example of how boards are making a mistake.

"They've only just come out with their schedule. Why does it take leagues so long to put a schedule together? We have all year to figure it out. It can't be right: I saw the other day that where leagues were overlapping, a player who got knocked out before the semi-finals or finals could actually make more money by going to another league. That shouldn't be a thing," Russell said.

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