Issues remain unresolved

With the fresh player auction looming large before the next season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Thursday’s meeting between the IPL team owners and the BCCI was expected to be far from a hunky-dory affair. And that’s exactly how it turned out, what with the BCCI and team representatives disagreed on more issues than one.

The bone of contention remained the number of players to be retained by the existing franchises. When the BCCI president announced that the IPL governing council had decided to allow every team to retain four Indian and three overseas players, it was met with stiff resistance.

While Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings stayed silent- since they do not want to lose their prized possessions, Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, — the other eight franchises were vociferous in demanding more players be made available in the auction pool.

“When you have a fresh auction, what is the point in 56 main players being left out of the pool? Not only will it be unfair to the two new teams, but it will also impact teams that are not happy with their combination,” a top franchise official told Hindustan Times.

Another franchise official pointed out that it may also devalue some of the retained players. As a result, the BCCI decided to put the matter forward to a committee of three former India captains who are on the governing council — Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi.

Just like the player retention issue, the cap on a franchise’s expenditure for the auction also remained undecided. Most of the franchises demanded the cap be raised to $10 million from $7 million, as announced earlier by the suspended IPL chairman Lalit Modi.