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AT THE time of writing, Durham are all but assured a place in the Twenty20 quarter finals and the prospect of being involved in the much-vaunted Champions League looking like a weird possibility, much like Millwall's jaunt into Europe in 2004.

The political furore over who will actually be allowed to compete in such a competition has had as many twists and turns as the action on the pitch and is threatening to descend into farce after the BCCI threatened to pull out of any event featuring players from the renegade ICL, rather than the officially sanctioned IPL.

Now if the sheer volume of initials is something that makes your eyes blur as if you were trying to complete a test at the opticians while under the influence of Special Brew, it's no wonder that the ECB have acted in the manner of baffled onlookers.

The inevitable litigious exploits that will no doubt follow, threatens to make a mockery of any notion of a Champions League and instead leave cricket with a multi-initialled farce in the manner of boxing.

Durham's only representative in the rebel ICL (which of course makes it sound not unlike the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars) is their captain and arguably best player, Dale Benkenstein.

If push came to shove, he would no doubt not play for the benefit of the club as a whole, but surely the idea of a Champions League is to feature the best players and indeed those that made the club champions?

The appeal of such a league must also come under close scrutiny.

While football's Champions League draws on an affinity towards long-established clubs from your own nation or at very least a common hatred of much the same thing, do broadcasters in England really imagine a nation sufficiently getting behind or indeed against a team like Kent?

It's not that the cricketing authorities should be criticised for a lack of ambition, but there seems to be a failure to realise that in this country, cricket remains a niche market, especially with all of the major events consigned to satellite television.

This ambition seems to overreaching and the wrangles over who can't play with whom and where, like unruly school children who've fallen out over a particularly nasty message of Myspace, is overshadowing the need to make sure the domestic infrastructure is in place to make the game viable in the long term.

Twice Durham have completed games in near darkness and in conditions that you would have thought twice about had you been said school children.

While floodlights may not be popular with everyone, surely this farcical situation needs to addressed sooner rather than later, with it being hard not to feel some sympathy for the batsmen who had to face Steve Harmison bowling at 90mph, in the rain, at night.

As much as the big crowds are financially vital for the counties and there is a relish with being able to watch five home games over a three-week period, there is a sense of relief that the County Championship returns this weekend.

Gone for a brief period will be the talk of international space leagues, gawdy dancing girls, irritating bursts of The Beatles 'Help' whenever a batsman is out, thus killing any applause and back to cricket as we previously knew it.

Slow, unpopular old cricket, like a reassuring, occasionally soporific blanket, reminding us of the threat of becoming the very personification of premature old age.

12:07pm Friday 27th June 2008

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