**English counties are set to miss out on the 2010 Champions League Twenty20 after it was announced the event will be staged between 10 and 26 September.**Those dates clash with the end of the English domestic season, prompting the English and Wales Cricket Board to call for a rethink on the event’s timing.
In those 16 days, there are two County Championship rounds, and the semis and final of the new ECB 40 League.
England also play a one-day series against Pakistan from 10-22 September.
Lalit Modi, who is chairman of the Champions League and commissioner of the Indian Premier League (IPL) as well as vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), announced the date change on his Twitter feed.
“Dates are finalised as Sep 10- Sep 26 this year,” he wrote.
Last year the inaugural Champions League competition started on 8 October, featuring English counties Somerset and Sussex as well as teams from India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, West Indies and Sri Lanka.
Choppingwood
However, the September schedule for this year effectively means the two English counties who qualify from the domestic Twenty20 Cup will be unable to take part.
“ECB has expressed serious concern to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, Cricket Australia and Cricket South Africa concerning this decision and the matter will be discussed with the respective chairmen and presidents who are currently meeting in Dubai,” the ECB statement read.
“ECB believes that it would be a great shame for the Champions League tournament to be deprived of teams and players by this change of date in bringing forward the respective events by a week and has called on BCCI to review all alternatives.”
Somerset chief executive Richard Gould told the Guardian newspaper that a competition without English counties could devalue the tournament for both sponsors and fans.
The riches on offer to teams qualifying for the lucrative Champions League has prompted several counties to invest heavily in players for the new season.
The reformatted domestic Twenty20 competition - from which the two finalists qualify for the Champions League - permits counties to register up to four overseas players, while fielding a maximum of two in each game.
Meanwhile, Leicestershire recently said they will not field veteran wicketkeeper Paul Nixon in the Twenty20 Cup, for fear of being barred from the Champions League.
The club had been advised that because of Nixon’s past involvement in the unsanctioned Indian Cricket League, they may not be invited to participate in the Champions League - were they to qualify - if he plays in the domestic competition.