IPL owners for free players market

Eight of the 10 franchisees of the Indian Premier League (IPL) today rejected a proposal by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to allow existing teams to retain seven of their players — four Indian and three foreign — for next year’s Twenty20 tournament.

Instead, they have demanded that all the players be put on the block for a mega auction, as was envisaged earlier. The auction is expected to take place sometime later this year.

The IPL’s earlier understanding, of 2008, was that player contracts with franchisees would be for a duration of only three years, after which they would have to get back for a fresh round of auctions.

The BCCI has now decided to place the controversial issue before a three-men committee of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri.

The 10 franchisees, which included the two new teams from Pune (of Sahara) and Kochi (Rendezvous Sports), had a heated argument with the board of BCCI in Mumbai today. The IPL Governing Council will be meeting in Mumbai on Friday to discuss today's meeting.

Some people who were present in the meeting said the only teams which supported the retention proposal today were Mukesh Ambani’s Mumbai Indians and India Cements’ Chennai Super Kings. Mumbai Indians has been keen on retaining Sachin Tendulkar, the iconic batsman; India Cements wants to retain its star, Mahendra Dhoni. The two new team owners also opposed the move, saying they would be at a major disadvantage over their competitors with hardly any star cricketer to choose from.

The BCCI told the franchisees that suspended IPL commissioner Lalit Modi had informed the governing council that the franchisees had, at a meeting in Bangkok last year, agreed that each team could retain seven players as there was a consensus on this issue, these people said. However, franchisee owners averred they had not agreed to any such proposal. And, that if it was minuted otherwise, they had not endorsed such a decision.

Interim IPL chief Chirayu Amin, BCCI President Shashank Manohar and Secretary N Srinivasan attended the meeting with the team owners.

The lattter included Vijay Mallya, owner of Royal Challengers Bangalore; Srinivas Bommidala of GMR Sports, which owns Delhi Daredevils; Ram Reddy of Deccan Chronicle; Raj Kundra of Rajasthan Royals; Jay Mehta of Kolkata Knight Riders; Ness Wadia of Kings XI Punjab, and Nikhil Meswani of Mumbai Indians,among others.

“A lot of issues came up for discussion, including that of players during the players’ auction and salary cap of the players. We, the franchisees, put forth our views to the BCCI, and they, in turn, presented their views,” said Bommidala.

Mallya said a majority of the 10 franchises favoured all players going back into the auction pool, with none retained by any team.

The players have largely been with the same team for three seasons after the first auction in 2008. Mallya also said the franchises wanted the spending cap to be increased from $7 million to $9 million.

This was the first meeting between the franchisees and the IPL officials since the April 26 suspension of Modi. Mallya, however, refused to answer questions on Modi, saying,” Lalit Modi is suspended, so we have to look ahead now.”