India-born Israel cricket boss seeks BCCI support

Newly elected Israel cricket president Joseph Tal, who was born in Mumbai, has sought the support of his native country to nurture the existing talent in the Middle Eastern nation.

Tal's family immigrated to Israel in the 1960s when he was 16.

"There are lot of Indian origin youngsters playing for the Israeli national cricket team and also in the Israeli league. Most of them have grown up following Indian cricketing legends and closely watch India play," Tal told PTI.

"In the past there has been some effort to work out some sort of a training programme for our cricketers with the help of BCCI. We would like to renew those efforts and see if we can get some sort of a support from BCCI to help nurture our young talent," he said.

The Israeli league has 18 teams participating at two levels. Tal wants to change that and plans to start a programme which would bring cricket into schools and draw youngsters of diverse origin to the game.

"There have been experiments in the past when ICA tried to use cricket as a tool of bringing youngsters from all sorts of background together, in efforts to promote co-existence. Some games were played also in the West Bank.

"Our new team at ICA would work to bring back cricket at schools, organising training programmes for youngsters and also lead some promotional activities, to popularise the game beyond a small section of population that shows interest in the game at the moment," Tal stressed.

ICA has been an associate member of International Cricket Council (ICC) since 1974 and is a founder member of the European Cricket Council (ECC). Israel's national team has been participating in ECC tournaments but has not fared too well of late.