Because if you looked carefully, Alex was not applying for the challenge. He was offering to pay for the experiment himself and was inviting Randi to take part, since he'd been actively disparaging Sheldrake in the media.

Even some of Randi's fellow skeptics do not take the challenge seriously. You can read more about this here; just scroll down to Randi. Challenges like this in any field are very often nothing more than publicity stunts, and the inventors are usually the ones who get to make the rules and the judgements. There's another challenge out there that I'm aware of, for a doctor to drink a concoction containing all the adjuvants in common vaccines. This, too, is a publicity stunt, as is Kent Hovind's challenge to "prove" that evolution is a fact. Interestingly, while skeptics would be quick to point this out, they in turn tend take Randi seriously.

Secondly, about morphic fields. I have Sheldrake's seminal book which illustrates the subject, "The Presenece of the Past," but I have not yet completed it. I am not well and one of my symptoms is brain fog, and the book being a bit ponderous, has caused me some problems. I'm going to ask if we can postpone discussion of this particular area of his work until I can learn more about the specifics myself. What I do know about, however, is his "dogs that know" experiments. If you would familiarise yourself with the details of that, we could talk about it. If you would like some links, I will sort some out shortly.