<b>Chandra plans Rs100cr Indian Cricket League</b>

Zee Telefilms today took the cricket board by surprise by announcing a parallel cricket league in the country, three decades after Australian millionaire Kerry Packer had done a similar thing to revolutionalise the game worldwide.

Addressing a press conference, Subhash Chandra, chairman, Essel Group announced the break-away league which would be initially played in the Twenty20 format.

Chandra said the league will have an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore and each of the six teams would be coached by an ex-India player.

He said each team would comprise four foreign, two Indian and eight budding players.

He said the Essel group also had the plan of setting up cricket academies and BCCI would be free to draw from the pool of talented players.

Chandra said the league had been aimed at improving the quality of cricket talent in India and could be the richest professional league with an annual prize money of Rs 10 lakh. "It troubles me that a country with more than a billion cricket fans and million cricket enthusiast fairs so poorly at the international stage. A new approach must be taken for the sport to grow and prosper in the years ahead," he said.

"A professional league is the need of the hour as is the killer instinct in the players. Budding talent must be groomed at the grassroot level and given the experience to play on competitive pitches and not on placid tracks," he added.

The concept of a parallel league was introduced by media tycoon Kerry Packer, who introduced the World Series cricket in 1977 which attracted a hosts of top players at that time.