 The Indian cricket board and two of the eight franchises, Mumbai and Chennai have
said that they would like the teams to retain some of the players for the next
season's IPL. On the other hand, the other eight franchises, including the new
ones, Pune and Kochi have said that they will want all the players to be
sent back to the player auction pool from where all the players will be bid for
again.
According to some media reports in some of the websites, the BCCI had made
an announcement to the franchises that there will be seven players who will
be allowed to play for the same team, but this was met with a strong disapproval
from the six franchises except Mumbai and Chennai.
The franchises said that they had made it very clear in the previous meeting
that was held in Bangkok that they did not want any of the teams to be able
to retain any player, and that the IPL Governing Council could not decide on
this without the majority from the franchises. Chennai and Mumbai want to have
their icon players, MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar, held back in their
sides. Frankly, it will be interesting to see how the teams like Mumbai Indians
look if Tendulkar does not play for them.
The other issue with the seven-player theory is that it will mean that of all
the cricketers, 56 of the top players will be held back by the eight teams and
the two new franchises will not be able to bid for it.
The other problem was related to the number of games that will be played in
the tournament, and while the BCCI was concerned about the fitness of the players'
fitness, the owners said that they will not be able reduce the number of games
because their financial projections were based on this as well. So, as things
stand, there will be a total of 94 games in the next edition of the IPL if the
BCCI bows to this demand.
It has also been said that the teams have raised this question about the payment
of around Rs 22 crores (US$4.75 million) to the qualifying sides for the first
edition of the Champions League T20. The payment was made to Chennai and Rajasthan.
The other six sides wanted to know why these two teams were paid such a huge
sum for not playing. The BCCI has said that they will investigate the matter.
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