Cricketers sign up with Zee

Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Dean Jones et al. to lead talent hunt.

For all those sceptics who wondered whether the Essel Group's Subhash Chandra would be able to pull off a parallel cricket league, a line-up of players and a business plan is already in place.

Chandra is rumoured to have roped in legendary cricketers including Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Dean Jones and Navjot Singh Siddhu for the executive committee of its newly-formed India Cricket League (ICL).

These players will be a part of a pool of 65 ex-cricketers that has been drawn by the group to act as selectors and for talent scouting. The executive committee, which is to be ICL's highest body, will manage the Rs 100 crore corpus being used to promote the league.

"ICL is also trying to work out a deal with current cricketers like Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar," said a source.

According to the source, money is no constraint for ICL where it comes to getting to best possible talent. Initially, Rs 6-8 crore have been kept aside for the purpose.

This move from Chandra is being compared to the Australian media giant Kerry Packer who started his own series of one day matches under lights with players wearing coloured uniforms. Packer had wanted to create an exclusive property for his Channel Nine.

After nearly 30 years, Chandra intends to do the same for Zee Network. Earlier, the Essel Group had lost out on the rights for all cricket matches, one-dayers as well as Tests, organised by BCCI in India up to 2011.

The group had launched Zee Sports last year in anticipation of bagging the BCCI telecast rights and also acquired Dubai-based sports channel Ten Sports. But the BCCI rights went to Nimbus Communications.

It also placed an aggressive bid of $900 million last year for the International Cricket Council (ICC) telecast rights till 2015 but lost out to ESPN. The ICL will now give Chandra not only a platform to launch future cricket stars but also an exclusive television property for its cable and Direct-to-Home service.

The ICL will have six teams, each comprising four international cricketers, two Indian cricketers and eight young talents. The teams will be expanded to 16 within three years.

The ICL will also set up nationwide residential cricket academies that will nurture young talent. Additionally, there will be a prize money of Rs 4.3 crore for the team winning the annual ICL tournament.