 The BCCI has granted amnesty to 79 ICL cricketers, along with 11 former cricketers
and 11 officials who were released from their Indian Cricket League contract.
These cricketers and officials will now undergo a cooling period of one year,
during which they will be eligible to participate in the Indian domestic tournaments
only. They will be eligible for selection for the national side only after this
one year period.
The list includes players like Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Deep Dasgupta,
Ambati Rayadu and Hemang Badani, along with officials like Ajit Wadekar
and Sandeep Patil.
Currently, the ICL is left with five of its Indian cricketers, but the executive
chairman, Kapil Dev hasn't quit the league, and nor has Kiran More.
The ICL, in the meantime, has continued to maintain the show will go on, and
that they will re-start from a clean slate. ICL officials have also claimed
that although the March edition of the Indian Cricket League had been cancelled,
the October one is on schedule as planned and the recruitment for the same will
begin soon.
The players are obviously happy to be back into the BCCI-fold, with the expectation
of playing in domestic cricket, and the IPL, which is also classified as a first
class event. However, the BCCI has yet to decide on whether to allow these former
ICL cricketers to feature in the Indian Premier League.
For the uninitiated, the BCCI had earlier announced an amnesty to all players
from the ICL who would end their contract with the rebel league. After this,
all the other cricket boards, including New Zealand, Bangladesh, Sri
Lanka and Pakistan had followed suit, but with varying degrees of
the cooling periods. Sri Lanka had it reduced to three months after which they
would be eligible to play for their country, where as New Zealand, obviously
reeling under the losses of Shane Bond and Darryl Tuffey had waived off any
such period.
The ICL was formulated by the Essel group under the aegis of Mr. Subhash Chandra
after he was rebuffed by the BCCI in his bid for the cricket telecast rights
in 2004. The ICL officials have had meetings with both, the BCCCI and the ICC
for the recognition of the league, but nothing has come out of them yet. In
turn, there have been unconfirmed offers from the BCCI to either own a franchise
in the next season or even have the ICL as a veteran's tournament. Both the
offers were refused by the ICL.
|
