India's Commonwealth Games to battle cricket for viewers

Commonwealth Games in October are set to compete next to India's obsession with cricket, if a high-profile home series against Australia is happening as planned.

A Ricky Ponting man is due to tour India in September-October while the four years games will take place in New Delhi October 3 to 14.

An official from the Indian Cricket Board (BCCI) said details of the trip, which is part of the International Cricket Council's Future Tours Programme, was intended with Cricket Australia.

"We have asked Australia to play two Tests and three one-day internationals rather than a series of seven one-dayers," said BCCI's chief organizational officer Ratnakar Shetty told AFP.

Australia, arriving in late September and must return by 31 October, when they begin a home series of Twenty20 and one day matches next to Sri Lanka.

The trip, when finished, are sure to further annoy the Indian Olympic officials, already seething at BCCI's decision not to send men and women cricket team to Asian Games in China in November.

"The BCCI does not contribute because there is money to be made on the Asian Games," said Indian Olympic Association President Suresh Kalmadi, head of the Commonwealth Games organizing committee.

"They think only about money. I'm glad cricket is not a part of the Commonwealth Games."
Although New Delhi is unlikely to find in Australia's route, millions of TV viewers to be glued to the cricket when the sports competition are on.

Cricket has so many followers in India, the organizers of the hockey World Cup in New Delhi in March advanced tournament with a week, so it would not conflict with the Indian Premier League.

Cricket, a non-Olympic sport, was last seen on a large multi-sport happening in the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, but was dropped for the next two editions in England and Australia.