Surrey "leading pursuit of IPL riches"

This story on Cricinfo has left me a little confused. It would seem that Surrey are pursuing some sort of IPL tie-in, but the reverse of the agreement Hampshire have signed with the Rajasthan Royals (story here), i.e. Surrey would be the senior partner.

Because of the Oval's position so close to the centre of London and with a large potential South Asian fan base to tap in to, Surrey's CEO, the very ambitious Paul Sheldon, seems to want to position the club in order to take advantage of the relatively un-tapped IPL riches.

I'm not sure about the clamour to become so intimately involved with the IPL, sure it might bring in more money, but where does it take the club, and ultimately, English cricket? This may be a failure of imagination on my part, but I just can't see where this is going. Perhaps as the ideas are fleshed out a little the picture will become clearer, but as it stands, I am firmly in the sceptics camp.

I am all for the globalisation of cricket, and I like the idea of the Champions League, but if each IPL team/county/state side is twinned, all we're going to get is an overcrowding of an already busy schedule, packing it with yet more Twenty20 cricket. You can have too much of a good thing, and I fear we are going down that route.