The hugely successful Indian Premier League may find a place in International Cricket Council's calendar soon if the ICC Excutive Board accepts a draft proposal to open a window for the Twenty20 venture in its ongoing meeting in Dubai. The BCCI-backed IPL has found mention in a ‘radical’ draft proposal to revamp the international cricket calendar, which will be taken up by the ICC Executive Board in the next two days, according to a report in The Australian. Leading cricketers and players' associations have been demanding a window for the IPL, fearing that top cricketers all over the world will be lured away by the lucrative money being offered by it to abandon playing for their country. A recent survey by the Federation of International Players Associations (FICA) had revealed that more than half of the 64 international players interviewed from seven of the nine active Test countries, including Australia, were willing to end their international career for IPL money. The new draft has also a proposal that each of the nine Test-playing nations faces each other over a two-year period in three-match Test series. The top four nations would then play semi-finals and a final in the third year, while the fourth year of the cycle would be kept free for ‘icon’ series such as the Ashes. The current six-year cycle future tours programme runs till 2012 but the ICC has already begun discussing what will replace it.
