IPL is a business: team owners tell BCCI

Agencies

New Delhi, 25 June 2010: The divide between the BCCI and the IPL franchises got wider with the team owners demanding availability of all players for the fourth edition of the cash-rich league, saying after all it’s a business. And, if the cricket board is worried about players’ fitness, they should not have added two more teams for the next season.

The IPL governing council is meeting on Friday to draw a road map for the fourth edition of the twenty20 league.

The meeting is expected to discuss the auction of new players for the IPL-4. But it is not clear whether the members will discuss the suspended IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi’s replies to the show cause notices.

 

 

The board has slapped three show cause notices charging Modi with misdemeanours in the running of the twenty20 League.

Modi has answered two out of them so far. CNN-IBN spoke to Vijay Mallya, owner of the IPL team Bangalore Royal Challengers.

CNN-IBN: Mumbai seems to want to retain Sachin Tendulkar, Chennai seems to retain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, you are saying even these players should be available in the auction.

Vijay Mallya: The majority view eight out of the ten franchises very clearly told the BCCI and IPL representatives that we want all players in a auction, and we believe that’s the right way to go.

CNN-IBN: But that agreement was when Lalit Modi was the in-charge. That seems to be the worry after he is no longer there. There seems to be a bit of a vacuum but it’s also a question which apparently was asked about the number of matches. Now there are 10 teams which means 94 matches. The board wants it in two groups apparently. Do the franchise owners not like that?

Vijay Mallya: All owners are absolutely unanimous in saying that the match format or the fixture format should remain the same if the number of matches have been increased which they indeed have. The BCCI knew this before they took the decision to introduce two additional franchises. So it is what it is...

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