County stint will help me improve as a batsman: Kohli

Bengaluru

India captain Virat Kohli feels playing county cricket in England ahead of their tour later this summer will help improve his game. It was confirmed last month that BCCI had granted permission for him to seek a deal. “Playing county cricket will help me improve my game,” Kohli told a news channel. “I think it makes things more challenging and more competitive and there are no guarantees whether you are going to do well even if you go in advance. It’s just about giving yourself more opportunity to get used to the conditions that you are not used to.”  Kohli does not have a good record in England in Tests, managing just 134 runs in five Tests at 13.40 during the 2014 tour. The 29-year-old batsman, currently skippering Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League (IPL), has been strongly linked to Surrey but a deal has not been confirmed yet. Two of India’s senior Test players, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ishant Sharma, are already playing county cricket for Yorkshire and Sussex, respectively. In England, India have one four-day warm-up match against Essex at Chelmsford, ahead of the five-match Test series which begins on August 1.

Karachi
PCB delegation to visit India for ICC meeting  

For the first time in more than two-and-a-half years, a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) delegation will travel to India to attend an International Cricket Council meeting. PCB chairman Najam Sethi and Chief Operating Officer Subhan Ahmad will attend the meeting, which is slated to be held in Kolkata on April 21. It will be the first time a PCB delegation will visit India since Sethi and former PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan had flown to Mumbai in 2015 to hold talks with their BCCI counterparts regarding the resumption of bilateral cricketing ties between the archrivals.    

London
Modi forecasts IPL players will earn ‘$1m a game’   

Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi believes a time will come when players will earn $1 million per game while warning that the traditional programme of matches between countries “will disappear”. “The IPL is here to stay,” Modi told Britain’s Daily Telegraph in an interview published Thursday.  “It will be the dominant sporting league in the world.” At present there is a team salary cap, with the likes of England all-rounder Ben Stokes earning $1.95 million per season from the Rajasthan Royals. But Modi believes that if that $12 million cap is relaxed, leading IPL players could earn as much as English Premier League footballers and even NFL stars. “You will see players making $1-$2m a game,” said Modi. “It will happen sooner rather than later. In a free market the person with the deepest pockets will win. The players will gravitate towards who pays the biggest salary.” — Agencies