November 6th, 2007 
Deepak Indian Cricket League Everything started with a bid for the telecast rights of the biggest international cricket event- The world cup 2003. Zee Telefilms, was denied the telecast rights, though their big was highest. Once again Subhash Chandra of Zee Telefilms bid for telecast rights in 2004 and was denied. His response: the ICL. “They denied us the cricket content,” says Himanshu Mody, business head of ICL and Zee’s sports channels. “So, we had to create our own content”. The Indian Cricket League (ICL) is a proposed private cricket league that will run parallel to the existing cricket league managed by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The format of ICL will be Twenty20. On Zee Telefilms announced that it would be partner with infrastructure major IL&FS to create a new ambitious cricket league, Indian Cricket League (ICL). This league will have a prize money of $ 1 million for the winner. ICL was set up with a Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) corpus, and would initially comprise six teams to be expanded to 16 in three years. This will make ICL the richest professional league in the country with an annual prize of $1 million (Rs. 4.4 crore). ICL has already signed a number of major players but is yet to reveal their names. On July 24th, some great international names cropped up such as Brian Lara. The ICL has confirmed that Brian Lara and Inzaman-Ul-Haq has signed up and will be joining the league. The Pakistan Cricket Board warned its players to stay away from the league. Imran Farhat though chose to opt out of his Pakistan Central contract to sign with the Indian Cricket League. Former captain of the Pakistan Cricket Team Javed Miandad said he is not able to understand why PCB is not allowing its players to play in the league and even threatened players with a lifetime ban. Each team will be coached by a former India player and will comprise four international, two Indian and eight budding domestic players. Essel Group is also planning to set up cricket academies all over the country. BCCI has been assured that it is free to draw from ICL’s talent pool. The league will be functional by July-August 2007 and will start with Twenty20 format matches in the run-up to the Twenty20 World Cup in September 2007. Only professional, paid and accountable people have been hired to run the ICL. There will be [...]
Posted in 
