Indian Cricket League

The Indian Cricket League (ICL) is a private cricket league that runs parallel to the existing cricket league managed by BCCI. Matches in the ICL follow the Twenty20 format. Tau Devi Lal stadium in Panchkula, near Chandigarh, will be hosting the ICL for the 2007 season. The stadium has a capacity of 20,000 and the ICL plans to lease the stadium for 10 years.

History
Zee telefilms (part of Subhash Chandra promoted Essel Group) bid for the telecast rights of the biggest international cricket event - 2003 World Cup. Although the highest bid, it was unsuccessful. Subhash Chandra again bid for telecast rights again in 2004 and ended up in an inconclusive court battle. Last March, he bid again for the 2006-10 rights and once again lost. 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”.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.However, 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 why it is threatening players with a lifetime ban

League structure
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 became active in November 2007 with matches in the Twenty20 format.
Only professional, paid and accountable people have been hired to run the ICL. There will be no "honorary-positions" such as unpaid selectors. Former international cricketers including Kapil Dev, Tony Greig, Dean Jones and Kiran More have been hired as board members of the Indian Cricket League.The board positions will be paid positions.

Reasons for creation

Several factors have played a role in formulation of a cricket league which may run in parallel to the current official Indian cricket control body, BCCI.

The "Inverted Pyramid" cricket structure
There is wide disparity in facilities enjoyed by the national team and the several regional ones. This makes the regional players far from finished products when they get a chance to represent the country, hence preventing a huge country like India to have adequate bench strength when key players get injured or retire. Also, the regional cricket boards depend on the BCCI for hand-me-downs in terms of funds for infrastructure and grassroots development. The players who make it to the top have strong backing from sports management firms and also can afford top notch personal trainers, physiotherapists and technical consultants, hardly the preserve of the average-joe Ranji player.

India's poor performance in recent years
Essel group has sought to capitalise on the disappointment of Indian cricket fans with the poor performance of their cricket team in the World Cup and the South African tour prior to that. Indian team's failure in the World Cup has led to lower earnings to cricket broadcasters, advertisers, cricket sponsors and travel & tour operators. These defeats also caused massive disappointment to India's millions of fanatical cricket fans.

The question of 'why can't a nation of 1 billion with millions of cricket players produce even a reasonably competent team' has been hotly debated across newspapers and news channels. One of the answers which has gained wide acceptance is that the BCCI, the cricket control body of India, has failed miserably in its job and needs a major overhaul in its working and organisation. Millions of Indian fans who hero-worshipped their cricket team are finding BCCI, with its image already mired with scandals, favouritism and political influence an easy target to blame for this debacle.

Zee Telefilms desire to create sports content
The league could help the country develop talent, as well as provide lucrative sports programming for Essel Group for Zee Telefilms, which lost out on the rights to broadcast all BCCI-sanctioned cricket matches in India until 2011.

In fact Essel Group had launched Zee Sports earlier with the anticipation of bagging the BCCI telecast rights in 2006. This was followed by Zee acquiring 50 percent in TEN Sports in November 2006 for Rs. 257 crore (Rs. 2.57 billion). This gave the company a few international cricket rights — West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. But these five-year rights were at their end.

Cricket played in India generates Rs. 1,000 crore (Rs. 10 billion) in advertising and subscription revenue and Subhash Chandra has been acutely aware of his company missing out on the lucrative cricket pie.

During his battle with BCCI and ESPN Star Sports for the five-year telecast rights in August-September 2004 in the Bombay High Court, Chandra was present every day for the hearings. Despite Zee bidding the highest at $307 million, BCCI and its then president Jagmohan Dalmiya denied him the rights.

The pain of denial has been with Chandra since 2000 when the ICC World Cup rights were sold to NewsCorp’s Global Cricket Corporation (GCC) for $550 million despite Zee bidding the highest at $650 million citing Zee's insufficient sports marketing experience.

In August 2005, Zee again emerged forerunner with a pitch of over $340 million while ESPN Star Sports, the other principal contender, is believed to have offered around $325 million. BCCI took the stance that Zee was not qualified as a specialist broadcaster and refused to consider Zee’s proposal. The matter expectedly went to court and Doordarshan emerged the beneficiary.

Chandra then tried the political route too and supported Sharad Pawar’s candidature as BCCI president against Dalmiya. Pawar emerged victorious but not Chandra. In the last round of bidding in February, last year, it was Nimbus who bagged BCCI’s telecast rights till 2011 for $613 million with Zee trailing at $513 million.

Since there was a Zee-Nimbus alliance before the bidding, media pundits thought Nimbus’ bid was a Zee front. But Nimbus chose to go its own way and launched its own sports network – NEO Sports.

BCCI's Response

The BCCI refused to recognise ICL as a cricket league, and criticised Kiran More and Kapil Dev for joining ICL.Kapil Dev's association with ICL was seen as conflict of interest as he was the chairman of National Cricket Academy, a BCCI owned cricket facility.As of August 21, 2007 Kapil Dev has been sacked from his NCA post.Subhash Chandra had earlier stated that the ICL will go ahead regardless of the BCCI stance. The International Cricket Council gave a statement through its chief executive, Malcom Speed, that ICC won't recognize ICL unless BCCI recognizes it. ICC looks at ICL as an issue to be sorted out by BCCI.

Faced with the threat of young players joining the ICL, the BCCI jacked up prize money for winners, runner-up and losing semi-finalists across all tournaments. An average domestic cricketer can hope to make around Rs 35,000 per match day from the season of 2007-08: more than double the Rs 16,000 they got in 2005-06. The BCCI has also planned to do away with honorary selectors, who will be paid from September 2008 onwards.

BCCI has started its own international Twenty20 league, with the help of Australian, England & South Africa boards. The league, which will start in October 2008, is called the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket. The league model is said to be a revolutionary one, on the model of NFL, MLB in USA

ICL takes BCCI to court

In August 2007, ICL filed a petition against BCCI in the Delhi High Court accusing that BCCI is threatening and intimidating them as well as other state organsiations not affiliated to it and asked the court to stop BCCI from interfering with its attempts to sign up players for its tournaments.It also petitions that the BCCI stop trying to "out-hire" many cricket stadiums in India that are owned by the state governments, in anti-competitive, anti-market behaviour to stop the ICL from using them to play matches.

On August 27, 2007, the Delhi High Court ruled in favor of ICL. In its ruling, the Delhi High Court has said that players should not suffer in the battle between corporate giants. The court has issued notice to all corporate sponsors, the state cricket associations & the BCCI against terminating contracts of players joining the league.

The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) of India has asked its Director-General of Investigation to do an initial investigation into BCCI's action against players who have joined ICL. The investigation was based on media reports of BCCI giving an open statement that it will ban players who will join ICL. It was also reported in the media that all state associations, under BCCI, have removed cricket players from contracts.

Support for the league

ICL has received support from unexpected quarters. There was a fear that lack of infrastructure, like the cricket stadiums, might limit the success of the operation of the league. But, support from various government bodies has boosted the league. It was reported that camps will be held at Mayajaal in Chennai, which is a private resort with good cricket facilities .Indian Railways chief Lalu Prasad has shown his backing by opening all the cricket stadiums controlled by the Indian Railways to the league. Terming ICL as a “good initiative”, Mr. Lalu Prasad has given a statement saying that the BCCI and ICL should, each, come up with a cricket team and play against each other to show who's the best. The state government of West Bengal has also agreed to rent its cricket grounds, notably the Eden Gardens, to the league and anybody else.

Future of ICL
It has often been said that the ICL is a challenge and/or a rival to the BCCI.In a poll conducted by a leading online cricket website 68.9% of those voted said ICL will do better than BCCI in the coming years, 14.9% said they will work together with ICL having a supportive role, while 16.2% said that ICL will be a failure.

Broadcasting of ICL

Since the whole ICL is conducted by Zee Telefilms, The ICL is going to be broadcasted worldwide on Zee Sports. Even online it will be broadcasted by Zeesports through online broadcasters like Streambox