MUMBAI, 22 August 2007 — India’s cricket chiefs intensified the battle against an unofficial multimillion dollar league yesterday by removing the legendary Kapil Dev as head of the country’s junior academy.
Kapil, India’s lone World Cup winning captain, is regarded as the brain behind the breakaway Indian Cricket League (ICL) which has signed up international stars and domestic players for the next three years.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which met here yesterday, sacked Kapil, 48, from the honorary post of chairman of the Bangalore-based National Cricket Academy (NCA).
The BCCI also decided to bar those Indian players aligned to the ICL from playing first-class cricket, hence making them ineligible for selection in national teams.
“Every individual has a right whether he wants to associate himself with the BCCI or any other organization,” BCCI treasurer N. Srinivasan told reporters after day-long meetings. “However, if he chooses to associate himself with any other organization, he will not derive any benefit or be connected with any of BCCI’s activities in any way.
“You can’t have a foot in both places. That’s why Kapil has ceased to be the chairman of the NCA.”
Kapil said he was unconcerned by the board’s decision and criticized it for opposing the league. “There is nothing surprising with the board’s action. This is how they have been functioning for the last 70 years,” he told Aaj Tak television channel. “They have never thought it fit to talk to any player. I am disappointment I will not be able to interact with the young boys.”
The ICL, bankrolled by media baron Subhash Chandra who owns India’s largest listed media company Zee Telefilms, plans to hold Twenty20 tournaments between city teams for the next three years. The rebel league has drawn a comparison with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket that split the sport in the 1970s.
Sandeep Patil, Madan Lal and Balwinder Sandhu, all members of the 1983 World Cup champion team, have joined Kapil in signing up with the league. They have coaching assignments for the ICL teams that will feature foreign stars and Indian youngsters.
Following the BCCI directive that no member of the board should have any link with the ICL, former Test wicketkeeper Kiran More, who recently served as the chief national selector, quit his elected position as secretary of the Baroda Cricket Association.
The rebel league has rankled the cricket board, which warned players of a life ban and loss of financial benefits if they joined the unofficial event.
The Indian board’s threat seems to have failed, as several former internationals and young state team players have signed up for the rival league.
Heading the list of seven foreign players who have already signed up for the ICL is former West Indies skipper Brian Lara, who retired from international cricket after West Indies failed to make the World Cup’s semifinal in April.
The other foreign cricketers who have signed contracts to play in the ICL are Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Abdul Razzaq and Imran Farhat from Pakistan, and Lance Klusener and Nicky Boje of South Africa.
Among the Indian players who had decided to join the ICL are former internationals Dinesh Mongia, Deep Dasgupta, Jai Prakash Yadav, Reetinder Sodhi, Laxmi Ratan Shukla and Thiru Kumaran.
