Udal told BBC London 94.9: “I genuinely believe we can win it. We were underdogs all summer and that was fine.

“Even up to finals day in the Twenty20 we were 11-1 outsiders of four teams and that counted in our favour.”

Middlesex open the event with a group stage match against Australian winners Victoria in Mumbai on 3 December.

They will then face the Champions of South Africa Pretoria and the runners-up from the Indian Premier League, the Chennai Super Kings.

Udal added: “Yet again we’re underdogs, so we can sneak in the back door, win a couple of group games and all of a sudden you’re in the semi-final.

“Then it’s huge for everyone involved and the trophy might have Middlesex’s name engraved on it.”

The recent Stanford Series in Antigua did not go according to plan, though, as the Crusaders lost all three matches including their prize-money match against Trinidad and Tobago.

But Udal is not reading too much into the results in the Caribbean and expects a more professional approach in India.

He added: “This is the competition that matters to us. A chance to test ourselves against the best teams in the world. It is the big one, basically the Stanford thing was a big show.

“This is serious cricket against some serious sides. I think there will be a more serious side to the whole competition than there was in Antigua.

“We did not have any time practicing in the middle and we did not have any time practicing under the lights. So we went into the first game against England not having played on the pitch and not used to the conditions at all.

“That won’t be the case in India, we have got lots of practice time, lots of evening time under the lights, so our preparation will be a lot better for that.

“India is a fanatical about cricket, it is a religion out there. I know the people out there are looking forward to it immensely and hopefully we can go out there and do ourselves justice and bring home the prize.”

The Pakistan skipper told reporters in Lahore on Tuesday that he was convinced that conditions were conducive for India to tour Pakistan in January-February and play their series as per schedule.

Malik will be leading the Sialkot Stallions in the Champions League in India next month and said this would give him a good opportunity to exchange views with the Indian players, media and even officials.

“I will do my best to convince them it is safe to tour Pakistan. I will let them know how important it is for India to tour Pakistan on schedule,” he said.

Malik said his Sialkot team was preparing hard for the USD four million Champions League and were confident about their chances against the champion Twenty20 sides from the Indian Premier League, Australia, England and South Africa.

“We have prepared hard and well for the tournament and we have some good players so we do fancy our chances of doing well,” he said.

He said the fact that Sialkot had done well in Pakistan’s domestic Twenty20 competition and won it thrice had added to the confidence of the players.

Sialkot will miss the services of Imran Nazir, Rana Naved and Mohammad Asif for various reasons in the Champions League. While Nazir and Naved have signed up for the Indian Cricket League and can’t play for Sialkot, Asif is presently suspended by the Pakistan board over a doping offence.

Malik said India’s tour to Pakistan would help revive the sport in the country after a troubled year for the country’s cricket.

“The Indians have to realise what this tour means to us. It can be played at neutral venues but the impact of India being in Pakistan is very very important for us as a country, Malik added.

Dale Steyn
Titans – This tearaway fast bowler has stepped into the shoes of the great Allan Donald with ease and is today a fearsome sight for the batsmen as the cherry hurls at over 150Ks. Though Steyn had a forgettable first season at the IPL with the Royal Challengers, he knows India well to make an impact at the League. His ability to swing the ball at pace makes Steyn a deadly package.

Morne Morkel
Titans – Another fast bowler in the Proteas line-up who is impressing with his bounce and pace. The tall fast bowler would be a key player for the Titans though he has not yet come to grips with the line and length that one needs to bowl in Indian conditions to be successful.

English cricketers wanting to play in the Indian Premier League next year may be asked to give away their central contracts by an adamant ECB, which has made it clear that international engagements are top priority.

England team Managing Director Hugh Morris has categorically stated that the England Cricket Board (ECB) can release the interested cricketers for only two weeks as scheduled Tests and ODI programmes cannot be altered. And those wanting to go for the full event may be asked to forego central contracts.

“We will be playing Test matches in the early part of May and clearly that will have an impact on the amount of time that players may or may not go to IPL.

“My understanding is that the ICC, IPL and the ECB have made it very clear from the word go that international cricket takes precedence over domestic tournaments and I think that will be the case. That’s the very clear message we get from ICC. I understand that is what IPL think as well,” Morris was quoted as saying by ‘The Daily Telegraph’.

English players are yet to sign this year’s central contracts with the ECB, but there is every possibility of a standoff between players and the Board.

“I think we’ve made it very clear that we are very happy for the players to have a window of opportunity for the players to play in the IPL,” said Morris.

“Last year at the IPL, the Australians were only there for 25 per cent of the time because they had a Test series in the West Indies,” he added.

As per IPL rules all cricketers participating in the Twenty20 tournament need a ‘No Objection Certificates’ from their respective boards.

Middlesex plan to name star Twenty20 batsman Owais Shah in their squad for their Champions League adventure in India.

Shah, currently with England’s one-day squad in Kanpur, hit a match-winning half-century in the domestic final to get his county into the lucrative £5million (£3.3m) competition.

But with England’s Test warm – up taking place at the same time as the tournament, the national side were reluctant to let him join the Crusaders.

However, with Indian captain Mahendra Dhoni prepared to play for Chennai Super Kings, there is still a chance England coach Peter Moores will relent and allow Shah to link up with his county colleagues, so they are set to name him in their 15-man squad.

England Test opener Andrew Strauss will certainly not be missing out on the warm-up game as he prepares for action.

But Shah, who will have had plenty of one-day cricket under his belt, is keen to help his club as long as it is not at the expense of a Test spot.

Glamorgan have signed South African opener Herschelle Gibbs as their overseas player for 2009 after a successful stint during last summer’s Twenty20 Cup.

The exquisitely hand-sculpted trophy designed exclusively for the December 3-10 tourney will measure 41 cm in height, with a diameter of 31 cm and weigh just over 7 kilos. The trophy will be unveiled next month, prior to the inaugural match of the League.

On the choice of the French brand for making the Trophy, Lalit Modi, Chairman of the Champions League, said “Cartier has created some truly exquisite and stunning works of art be it in jewellery design, watches and accessories, that have adorned Hollywood beauties and Royalty alike.

“It was then an obvious choice for us to commission Cartier for creating a truly distinct and exquisite work of art, one befitting the stature of crowning the Champion of Champions in domestic club cricket. I am certain that this trophy, will definitely take pride of place in the Trophy cabinet of any of the eight teams contesting the inaugural Champions League come December 10.”

Bernard Fornas, President and CEO Cartier International, said “C for Cartier, C for Cricket are two simple seven-letter words that encapsulate passion and a union between elegance and style. These adjectives also, in a nutshell, capture the very essence of the trophy’s design.”

Two different Pakistan cricket teams lifted trophies on Sunday. The Pakistani national team completed a 3-0 sweep of the West Indies in Abu Dhabi, while in the Indian Cricket League, the Lahore Badshahs (ostensibly the ICL’s Pakistan team) won the best of three finals against the Hyderabad Heroes in Ahmedabad.

The Pakistan-West Indies series was thoroughly absorbing, courtesy of some close finishes and the hurricane force of two Chris Gayle centuries. Many of the West Indies squad recently won $1 million each playing for the Stanford Superstars against England. Pakistan did well to emerge undefeated against a buoyant and confident team.

Lumbering from crisis to crisis over the past couple of years, Pakistan still somehow keeps its head above water. During the past year they have played 22 ODIs, winning 19 of them. There is no telling how good this team could be if its affairs were run better.

No team has been hit with as many defections to the ICL from international cricketers as Pakistan. The biggest of those losses was Mohammad Yousuf who just a few weeks ago signed with the ICL citing lack of respect for his seniority as a reason for jumping ship. He was named in Pakistan’s side for the series against the West Indies, only for the Pakistan Cricket Board to discover that he had left for India to play in the ICL.

As is the directive from India’s all-powerful cricket board which runs the bigger, swankier IPL, any player who signs with the ICL must be banned from playing for their national team. Ever loyal to the whims of its neighbour when it comes to cricketing concerns, Pakistan duly slapped a ban on Yousuf — by some distance Pakistan’s best batsman. The team trotted off to Abu Dhabi, while Yousuf was swiftly inducted into the Lahore Badshahs, joining the ranks of the disgruntled and discarded.

The Lahore Badshahs swaggered around the ICL and were deservedly crowned the league’s champions. Much of the Badshahs success was due to the firepower of the opening pair of Imran Nazir and Imran Farhat. The two namesakes, both 26 years old, are a joy to watch in full flow — Farhat classier and more stylish; Nazir a virtual barbarian when things are going his way, as they did in Sunday’s final when he clubbed 111 off only 44 balls with 11 resounding sixes.

The Imrans have certainly had their chances with Pakistan, but neither was able to cement a place in the team. Once the PCB indicated a preference for the more polished but equally inconsistent Salman Butt at the top of the order, the two dashing openers threw their lot in with the ICL. One is left to wonder how good Pakistan would be if they could still call upon the services of the born-again Farhat and Nazir. Either one of them could partner Butt at the top of the order, with the other providing adequate backup and the necessary guard against complacency.

The noise coming out of Pakistan is that the ban against ICL players is under review though it is not likely that the ban will be lifted in the immediate future. Were Pakistan to bring back Nazir, Farhat and Yousuf, it is almost certain that India would not tour Pakistan in January. In a year where Pakistan played no Test cricket, all hopes are pinned on India’s impending visit and nothing will be done to jeopardize it. It will be a long winter before there is any thought of Pakistan welcoming back its prodigal sons.

That the Indian cricket board have changed the face of the game is indisputable. They have taken Twenty20 – a modest little English invention designed to help the first-class counties stave off bankruptcy – and transformed it into the mighty Indian Premier League, a must-have accoutrement for the world’s top players. Nobody quite knows where it will end.

Just how mighty the IPL has already become is underlined by the arrival of David Collier, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, in Mumbai for strained negotiations about England players’ involvement in the IPL. The presence of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff next year is inevitable. The devil is in the detail.

But India’s influence might not stop at cricket. It could conceivably become a major battleground between sports bodies who increasingly want to maximise commercial revenue from their matches – as well as to have the disturbing ability to sanitise coverage – and traditional media outlets who believe that independent coverage is under threat.

If any sporting body can be the catalyst for change, recent history suggests it could be the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). If bcci.tv, which was launched ahead of the India-Australia Test series six weeks ago to a lukewarm response, makes an impact, then rest assured that English football’s Premier League, for one, will be among many official bodies who take note.

The BCCI have sold online rights to three official websites for $50m (£33m) over 10 years. As well as bcci.tv, a start-up company called Global Cricket Ventures now has the rights to the official IPL site (iplT20.com) and the official site for the Champions League (ChampionsLeague.com) – the new world club Twenty20 tournament that launches next month, with Middlesex, the English champions, as one of eight teams.

As yet Global Cricket Ventures does not have the rights to live internet coverage. The TV companies have been shrewd enough to protect their rights deals by buying up live internet streaming as well, purely as a defensive measure. They may not be allowed to do so for much longer.

What Global Cricket Ventures (a joint operation between Live Current Media and Netlink Blue Holding, which will be responsible for IT solutions) does have is the rights to web highlight packages, plus highlights for mobile phones and archive material from the date of the agreement.

The effects of this will fill many sports documentary makers – and, arguably, fans – with dread. In future, economic realities will dictate that much of Indian cricket’s history will be told through official channels. Totalitarian states would have approved, though whether viewers will want to watch ‘official’ coverage remains to be seen.

Sharad Pawar, the Indian agriculture minister, in one of his last acts as BCCI president, hailed online and mobile-phone coverage as an increasingly popular ’second-screen experience’, enabling users to call up action any time, anywhere. In future – and at the rate of technological advancement it could be sooner rather than later – it will become the ‘first-screen experience’ as the internet supersedes television.

But for now nobody, and least of all Global Cricket Ventures, knows whether they can make money out of it. What fills established media companies with dread, and has the Association of Newspaper Editors in the UK full of doom and gloom, is that attracting an internet audience is one thing, making money out of them quite another.

The internet user has come to expect something for nothing, and cricket is no different. When Wisden.com, a recognisable worldwide brand, made a leaden attempt to build a model based on subscriptions, it attracted fewer than 5,000 subscribers, even though it was backed at the time by the hugely successful CricInfo website, which now averages more than 8m different users a month. No one is sure whether Wisden’s failure was that of a traditional cricket brand fast becoming outdated, or whether it had illustrated an eternal internet truth.

The uncertainty is shown in the successful bid of $50m for 10 years, small change in the context of Indian cricket-rights deals. Sony and World Sports Group paid more than $1bn for 10 years of IPL television rights. ESPN Star splurged just under $1bn last month for 10 years of Champions League coverage. Two years ago, Nimbus Sports paid $612m for only four years of Indian Tests and one-day internationals.

As a comparison, the ECB did well to secure a new four-year deal worth £300m ($445m) from Sky and Five for their home Tests and ODIs. It sounded even more impressive before sterling crashed against the dollar. But no one has ever been tempted by the idea of internet highlights packages in Britain, so in the current economic climate, if you have a half-decent server and a spare couple of grand, the time might be ripe.

There is reason to suspect that sport may be about to undergo its biggest transformation since it blossomed with the expansion of the railways in the mid-1800s. And it is time that independent media groups – and ultimately the public – stopped sleepwalking into it.

Reuters, the international news agency, refused to cover India’s Test series against Australia last month because of contractual demands that threatened its right to disseminate information as it saw fit. Reuters have now boycotted Australia’s Test series against New Zealand starting this week, again because of attempts to prevent distribution of photographs to cricket websites. Christoph Pleitgen, Reuters’ head of global news, said it was a core issue of press freedom.

Now that newspapers have their own websites, they are shifting uneasily to join Reuters’ boycott.

CricInfo has endured this treatment for years. One of the most popular websites in the world is persistently refused accreditation by the BCCI because it does not fit in with their grand design. It has learned to scramble for accreditation where it can. Established newspapers, who feared CricInfo’s pioneering of free internet cricket news as much as the BCCI did, were not about to run to help. Had they done so, sports journalism in the independent, mainstream media might not be facing the threat that it is today.