Press Trust of India
Mumbai, Oct 18: The BCCI decided Sunday against terminating the suspended IPL franchisees of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR), putting an end to the speculation surrounding their fate and ensuring their comeback in the cash-rich league in 2018.
At its working committee (WC) meeting here, the board decided that it would go with the Supreme Court-appointed Justice RM Lodha committee’s recommendation of suspending the two teams for two years. However, the BCCI did not clarify whether IPL will be a 10-team affair from 2018, when CSK and RR will come back to the fold.
“The IPL working group had made four recommendations out of which one has been accepted by the working committee. The two vacant slots (created by CSK and RR) will be auctioned for two years. After that, we will decide whether to go for two more franchisees or we should confine IPL to eight teams,” IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla said after the meeting.
Asked if the new franchisees will be from Chennai and Jaipur only, Shukla said: “City preference is not there as the highest bidder will get to choose.”
Other decisions that were taken and ratified at the meeting included starting the treasurer’s office operations from the BCCI headquarters here at the earliest.
The BCCI also appointed PricewaterhouseCooper (PWC) as the independent agency for due diligence on the utilisation of funds provided to the state associations.
The BCCI also said it was looking to revive the National Cricket Academy (NCA). “As proposed by the president, the revival of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) as the ‘Centre of Excellence’ is the top most priority of the BCCI. The board will look at the lands offered by KIADB. Top BCCI officials will inspect the land and finalise everything by a month,” said a BCCI statement.
