Eyeballs out for IPL

Lalit Modi is never slow in voicing his opinions and in an interview with the Guardian he says he wants the IPL to become the dominant sporting league in global sport and is convinced Test cricket has to become a day-night event.

We hope to become the dominant sporting league in the world, that's our aim. We are only a two-year-old league but we had close to 3.8 billion eyeballs last year. I use that phrase every time a person sits down and watches an IPL game live or on TV – that's an 'eyeball'. Every game last year we had 100m eyeballs. But because our objective is to become the most watched sporting event in the world we are now targeting 150m every day.

Twenty20 will become the dominant format – without doubt. It lasts only three hours and people don't have time any more to sit all day watching cricket. We're competing with football and other sports and I think three hours is a good time limit to help us expand the market. We are definitely bringing new consumers to cricket.

I am a great supporter of Test cricket. People say I'm not but I also run the marketing department of the BCCI [the Indian board of control] and Test cricket is extremely important to us. All I am trying to do is remind people that we live in a modern age and Test cricket has a big problem: it is played in the daytime when most people are working.

We should be embracing every opportunity for getting viewers into watching Tests and the most effective way is making it a day-night game. If you take it to day-night, then people can watch it on TV when they get home from work – or they can go to the stadium. There has been a big drop in Test cricket viewing [outside England and the Ashes] and it's because people don't have the leisure time in the day to watch it

Red Knights to ride in?
The disharmony among fans at Old Trafford over the Glazers' ownership of Manchester United has cranked up a level. A high-powered group of United fans going by the name of the Red Knights have met to discuss the possibility of putting together an offer for the club, but David Conn in the Guardian believes they will be in for a real fight.

Yet before any takeover becomes real there are, of course, major challenges. Put bluntly, they are: can this group of 40 or so people raise anything like the money required to make a realistic offer and, even if they do, would the Glazers sell?

To the first question, assumptions and figures are tossed around. The assumption is that the Glazers, who seem so resolutely thick-skinned in the face of their always stormy welcome in Manchester, would certainly not go without a profit. Of the original £810m purchase price in 2005, they paid £272m, with the rest borrowed from banks and, very expensively, from hedge funds. The presumption is that they would want a significant increase on that £272m before they even entertain a sale. The Red Knights would have to find that, and also take on or pay off the £716m debt. That takes the amount a group of wealthy Manchester United fans need to raise up to around £1bn, a massive mound.

Even if they do, the family has said it is not for selling. The sole point of the bond issue was to enable the Glazers to take money out of the club, £95m initially, to part pay-off the hedge funds whose £202m loans are accruing interest at a heartbreaking 14.25%, rising to 16.25% this August. With that device achieved, and a Wayne Rooney-inspired United still successful enough, the Glazers may dig in for what they claim they want – to remain owners for the long term.

England cant take Hart
England's defensive problems might not be too bad, writes Kevin McCarra in the Guardian, but the goalkeeping position is an issue. One McCarra feels can be solved by the relatively unheralded figure of Birmingham City's Joe Hart.

If serenity is of value, Joe Hart is the best placed of the candidates. A loan move to Birmingham City spared him the turmoil and expectation at Manchester City. He has had a measure of peace and security at St Andrew's, appreciating the steady cover of defenders such as Scott Dann and Roger Johnson. He came through a difficult period in comparative obscurity since it was not national news that Birmingham considered dropping him in the early stage of the campaign. By last month, Capello was extolling Hart's "fantastic season", only for him to have an unhappy time against Derby County the following week in an FA Cup tie that his side did at least win.

It is assumed that Hart will get his second cap at some stage tomorrow. These are early episodes in what ought to be a long career yet it says everything about the present reservations over England goalkeepers that the real debate may be over the timing of the invitation to make the position his own.