KEY POINTS:
Expect more New Zealand players to be snapped up for next year's second edition of the Indian Premier League.
There were seven in the inaugural competition. How do we know that number will grow? Two reasons.
First, the Indian board has said it will take "an active role" in making sure Bangladesh will have more than the present one contracted player lining up when the next IPL auction takes place, likely to be January 29.
This is a sweetener after 13 Bangladeshi players copped 10-year bans from their own board for signing for the "wrong" Indian Twenty20 mob, the privately run Indian Cricket League, which is viewed by the IPL as something to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe. With all due respect, New Zealand have significantly better players than their Bangladesh counterparts.
And the owners of the eight franchises will expect to be able to choose players on merit, rather than picking up saps because they're told by the bosses to play ball.
Dovetailed with that, New Zealand finish their test commitments against India in Wellington on April 7. The IPL starts on April 10 and is due to run to about May 29.
New Zealand players are free until the Twenty20 world championship starts in England in early June.
However, Australia are in South Africa until April 17; Sri Lanka are touring England from April 21 to May 30. That's players from four leading nations out for portions of the competition. The franchises need to find their players from somewhere.
So expect Jesse Ryder, provided he has a half-decent campaign, to be one of those being haggled over by the franchise fat cats.
Promising teenager Tim Southee is another likely to attract attention, plus a handful of others.
When the suspension was announced on the Bangladesh 13, Habibul Bashar, his country's highest test runscorer and player of 50 tests, said he was staggered at the size of the ban.
Really, he should have known better. Those who cross the IPL do so at their peril.
The way this works is when the IPL (the "right" league) sees players signing on for the rival ICL _ to which several (former) New Zealand players have attached their colours _ it leans on the International Cricket Council members to ensure they are drummed out of the official internationalgame.
Take Mohammad Yousuf, Pakistan's finest batsman, who is embroiled in a row after signing for the ICL, before being persuaded that the IPL was the way to go. Legal eagles are soaring over this one and Yousuf is under threat of a life ban if he goes the "wrong" way.
And as an extra helping hand to keep restless Bangladeshis in line, the Indians have said a Bangladesh team will be included in the 2010 Champions League Twenty20 (are you still with me?). This eight-day bit of froth starts on December 3 this year and initially involves teams from South Africa, India, Australia and England and with about US$6 million on offer.
Sound a touch like the haves and have-nots?
If you're trying to keep tabs on all the various forms of "international" cricket over the coming 10 months, and the "if it's April I'm in Mumbai" state of play, good luck.
