 IPL team Deccan Chargers has said that they will sue the IPL for taking
the home games away from their state. Deccan Chargers were supposed to play their
seven home games at Hyderabad and Vizag, but because of the Telangana issue, first,
the opening ceremony was shifted to Mumbai.
However, the IPL then also decided to shift the rest of the matches to Mumbai
and Nagpur, a decision that does not seem to have gone too well with the owners
of the side. A minister from Andhra Pradesh, the state to which Hyderabad
belongs, then went on to criticise the IPL for disallowing IPL games in the
state, and asked the team to protest against the same.
In turn, the Chargers have said that they will boycott the tournament and take
the IPL to court if they did not reverse the decision. A legal notice was sent
to BCCI and it read out "arbitrarily, unilaterally, without our client's
consent and in complete breach of the Franchise Agreement dated April 10, 2008."
So far, the franchise hadn't spoken too much about the issue, but with the
ministers sparking an outrage over the same, the decision to pull the Indian Premier League to court hasn't come out as a surprise.
The legal notice that was sent to the BCCI highlighted several points which
pointed to why the decision to shift the games was not correct. It said that
the officials associated with the staging of the games in both Hyderabad and
Vizag had given their nod. So much so, that despite the issue, the Telangana
Joint Action Committee, the head of the separatist movement, had also agreed
to heed to the IPL and cause disruption.
However, the best point brought forward by the Chargers' management was that
the games had been shifted to Maharashtra, where the Shiv Sainiks had already
said that they will not be allowing the Aussies to play. This, they said, would
in turn affect the performance of the team and hence the shifting of the venue
made to Maharashtra no sense at all.
Earlier, only the first game and the opening ceremony had been shifted out.
However, the IPL then decided to shift out all the games, much to the chagrin
of the owners, which included this point as well in their notice.
Already, an ODI between India and Sri Lanka was shifted from Visakhapatnam
last year, and two ODIs scheduled for Hyderabad between the Indian and English
women will now be played in Bangalore and Mumbai. Spectators have been disallowed
from entering the stadium for the first two days of the Duleep Trophy
final between West Zone and South Zone in Hyderabad because of a perceived security
threat.
It will be interesting to see how this one pans out in the near future.
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