David Hussey wants quarterfinal stage for next Champions League

SYDNEY - Victorian cricket captain David Hussey has asked Champions League organisers to look at introducing a quarter-final stage next year in order to make the Twenty20 tournament more attractive.

Australian T20 champions Victoria were eliminated from the 10-team tournament in South Africa despite winning more games than one of the qualifiers from the other group.

The Bushrangers won three of their four games to finish level on points with Chennai Super Kings and South Africa’s Warriors, but were eliminated, as their run rate was inferior to the other two teams.

Royal Challengers Bangalore qualified from the other group with just two wins, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The format for this year’s lucrative tournament was different to the inaugural competition last year, which had two more teams.

In 2009, the 12 participants were split into four groups of three, with the top two teams in each group advancing to a league stage.

With no English representatives this year because the County season was still going, organisers scrapped the league phase and went directly to semi-finals.

“I know the English boys were disappointed not to come over and be part of the Champions League, hopefully they get back into the competition next year and we can have maybe quarter-finalists, semi-finalists and finalists, that would be brilliant,” Hussey told AAP.

He nominated several positives Victoria could extract from the tournament, including the emergence of batsman Aaron Finch and pace bowler James Pattinson as potential Australian representatives. (ANI)