Cricket Australia praises IPL

CRICKET is facing challenging times at every level, senior Australian administrator Michael Brown said yesterday.

Brown, the operations manager for Cricket Australia, said the ICC's Future Tours Program was the game's "bread and butter, and we need to make sure that is protected".

Brown was confirming that the Australian tour of Pakistan scheduled for this month, but postponed for security reasons, would take place in two parts next year and in 2010.

He also said the crowded international schedule would make it difficult to plan a dedicated annual timeslot for the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition, which he said was already "very successful".

Australia and Pakistan would have preferred a single tour but it wasn't possible to fit it in, Brown said.

So Ricky Ponting's team will go there for five one-dayers and a Twenty20 match on its way back from South Africa in April and May next year.

The three Tests will be in August and September the following year, while the Pakistanis will tour Australia in 2009-10 for three Tests, five one-dayers and a Twenty20 match.

Brown said it was too early to guarantee the visit to Pakistan would not be called off again if security was a worry, but said Australia had every intention of playing the matches.

Asked about an IPL timeslot, Brown said: "It's a very difficult discussion. We often talk about the program being chess in three dimensions. There are a number of factors to be considered before you talk about carve-ups.

"The difficulty is that so many different groups would want to be involved in such programs."

Asked what CA thought of the IPL, which started on Friday night, Brown said: "It's been outstanding.

"I think someone described it as being like the Olympic Games.

"It's fantastic for cricket. We're here in Melbourne in an incredible AFL environment, yet people are talking up cricket.

"The little bits I've caught from our players, it's been very successful - a great credit to (the Indian board) and the people involved."