When Piyush Chawla set a unique record of playing for the foreign team in the T20 tournament in India, RCB’s team also included
A question: The name of the two Indian cricketers who have now closed the Champions League T20Indian team Play for?
This is not a common record. The reason for this is that the BCCI has a policy that whose name is in the Central Contract List or who is playing in the IPL, he cannot play white ball cricket for any other team of any other country. Nevertheless, this happened and one of the two cricketers named in making this record recently retired from cricket. Another reason for the discussion of this amazing record is the news that the Champions League T20 (CL T20) is again, even if the new name is starting. Given the growing popularity of the T20 league, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is thinking of starting the World Club Championship and in a way the CL T20 will have to play with a new name. The CL T20 used to play home teams from Australia, England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies. However, the discussion of CL T20 is a separate story.
One of the two Indian cricketers who has this record, one of the Indian leg -spinner Piyush Chawla was. He set this record of playing for a non-Indian team in the first season of CL T20 in 2009. How they made such a separate record, this is a very interesting story.
Piyush Chawla played for Kings XI Punjab, Kolkata Knight Riders, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians in the IPL. From 2008 to 2013, he was with Kings XI. After IPL 2009, in June, Piyush Chawla suddenly received an offer to play from England for Sussex County, at least by the end of that month. The county club team, in the absence of Yasir Arafat, a medium pace bowler from Pakistan, was looking for his substitute.
Piyush Chawla accepted the offer without delay and did his first county contract with Sussex. Till that time, in the English cricket season, the team’s condition was thin in the county championship and could not win a single win in 4 matches. Then Piyush Chawla was only 20 years old but it did not make any difference. In Verster, he put his first First Class 100 (102* runs off 86 balls) against Versterreshire and Sussex scored a big score of 620 for 9 wickets in this innings, which was his 7th highest score and in 13 years any team score the biggest score against Vorsterresire. Batting at number 9, Chawla hit 7 fours and 6 sixes in the 95 -minute innings and made his second 50 on only 28 balls. Later, he also took 6 wickets for 152 runs and Sussex defeated Versterushare by 10 wickets.
In his second match, he took 11 wickets for 170 runs against Summerset. Piyush Chawla also played a match in the Twenty20 Cup and his 2–14 bowling in 4 overs was easily defeated by Sussex Sharks in Hov. All this was so impressive that Sussex had decided that Chawla would play for him even in the 2010 English season.
Meanwhile, the schedule of the first season of CL T20 to be played in India was ready. It was known from the beginning that it would happen that the name of a player was qualified for the tournament, more than one team. On this, the tournament committee decided that in such a case, the players will play only for the team of the country for which they can play international cricket. Even then, if the other team wants to feed such a player, then he, the player of the player of the player will have to pay a compensation of US $ 2 lakh. The most special in this was that the player had to decide for which team he wanted to play?
Now if we talk about Piyush Chawla, then it happened that Deccan Chargers, Delhi Daredevils and Royal Challengers Bangalore qualified to play in the tournament and they were not on the role of any of them. On the other hand, Sussex sharks qualified in the Twenty20 Cup. Given Chawla’s performance during the season and his experience on Indian pitches, Sussex Sharks started working on the scheme to include him in the team for CL T20. Finally, the tournament committee called him on duty of the Pakistan team, allowing Yasir Arafat to play for Sussex in the tournament as a cover.
Although according to the CL T20 playing condition, the player was free to choose the team of his choice, but later the clarification came that if the player of the IPL team chooses to play for another team, then his IPL contract fees will be deducted. Since Chawla was not on the role of any team playing in the tournament, but the tournament committee covered them under this concession and Sussex was allowed to feed Chawla as a substitute of Arafat. Sussex coach Robinson had said, “PC (Piyush Chawla) being in the team will be very beneficial for us because along with playing well, he can give us internal information about Indian players and circumstances.”
Sussex sharks now eyeing a $ 2.5 million jackpot in the tournament. The schedule of the tournament was such that Sussex had to play two big matches in three days and one of them would have been on a flight to return home for less than 6 days after the start of two weeks of tournament. He was in the same group with New South Wales and Team Diamond Eagles from South Africa. Earlier, Sussex played two practice matches against Sri Lanka’s Yamba and Kolkata Knight Riders. For the record, Big Bash Champion New South Wales defeated Sussex Sharks by 35 runs in the first match and Chawla bowled 1-21 in 2 overs while being dismissed on the first ball in batting. In the second match, the first time the eliminator was used in the tournament and after the score remained equal at the end of 40 overs, there was a super over between Eagles and Sussex. The tiebreaker scored only 8 balls and Eagles won by 9 runs. In the match, Chawla made 9* off 7 balls in Sussex’s 119–7 and then did not allow Eagles to score with affordable bowling of 2–17 in 4 overs. In this way Sussex had to catch a return flight and Chawla saved another amazing record of bowling against any IPL team.
However, Piyush Chawla could not go to play county cricket in 2010 as the BCCI refused to give NOC to play in county cricket.
