The country’s cricket administrator on Monday terminated its contracts with Kochi Tuskers Kerala for “non-payment of bank guarantees”, kicking off a new area of confrontation with the franchisees.
Under the terms of the agreement, each franchise has to submit a bank guarantee every year that covers the fee payable to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). According to sources, the Kerala team, despite repeated reminders, defaulted on a Rs 156-crore annual payment. The 2010-founded team was bought for Rs 1,550 crore and the consortium has to pay a bank guarantee of Rs 156 crore every year for the next one decade.
The BCCI said the irremedial breach committed by the Kochi franchise had prompted the board to decide to encash the bank guarantee in its possession and terminate the franchise. “We have terminated the franchise because the breach is not capable of being remedied,” pointed out 1928-founded BCCI’s new president N Srinivasan, at a press conference after the board’s annual general meeting at the headquarter here.
The announcement has angered Kochi Tuskers. “The termination is illegal. We will take them (BCCI) to court, said its director Mukesh Patil. “We don’t have any dues outstanding with BCCI. In fact, BCCI will be paying us Rs 12-15 crore next month as a part of our central revenue,” he told Business Standard. The team is owned by consortium of investors which includes Film Waves holding a 13.97 per cent stake, Anchor 31.45 per cent, Parinee 30.27 per cent, Rendezvous 10 per cent, Anand Shyam 9.31 per cent and Vivek Venugopal five per cent.
The ICC-affiliated BCCI is not worried— more so, in backdrop of its legal battles that followed the recent termination of Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab franchisee. “Let them (Kochi Tuskers) go to court. They are a franchisee who have defaulted,” said a BCCI official. “As for the players, they are likely to go back into the auction. In case the players’ dues are not paid, we would ensure that it is paid from the bank guarantee money we encash.”
Since its inception, Kochi Tuskers hit the headlines early last year following a spat between then Indian Premier League boss Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor, who was a Union minister. It eventually led to the exit of both persons from their posts and a complete revamp of the professional league of T20 competition in India.
Again, the team was in eye of a storm due to lack of clarity in the team’s ownership pattern, a series of spats between its owners on shifting its base to Gujarat’s Ahmedabad and also tussles within the Kerala Cricket board.
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Kochi’s termination also means that the 10-team IPL tournament would now be reduced to nine. Any decision to conduct fresh auction for a new franchise would be taken by the IPL governing council in its next meeting, Srinivasan said.
All these prospects popped up on a day when Union minister Rajiv Shukla was named the new IPL chairman. He succeeds Chirayu Amin, who filled the post after the board sacked Modi.
The other appointments included Vilasrao Deshmukh as the media committee chairman, Jyotiraditya Scindia heading BCCI’s finance committee and Farooq Abdullah chairing its marketing committee.