MUMBAI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India is caught between a rock and a hard place on l’affaire CVC Capital Partners and the unfortunate fact (for the BCCI) that the global private equity major had put in a winning bid for the Indian Premier league’s new Ahmedabad franchise.
Fact: CVC Capital made the second-largest bid of Rs 5600 crores to pip the Adani Group to the post for the rights to own the Ahmedabad franchise of the IPL.
Fact: Said winning bid has been under the Indian cricket board’s scanner for CVC’s stakeholding in more than one betting company (Germany’s Tipico and Italy’s Sisal being two that Sportzpower is aware of).
Fact: CVC had cleared both the financial and the technical evaluation before being declared the winning bidder for the Ahmedabad franchise.
Fact: It is now coming on to two months since the BCCI declared CVC the winner in the race to own the Ahmedabad team.
Presumption: The fact that the BCCI is still maintaining radio silence on the status CVC’s claim to ownership of the Ahmedabad team is an indicator that the PE giant is on a strong legal wicket. Ergo the BCCI is on a sticky legal wicket as far as rescinding CVC’s rights to own an IPL team.
Fact: The legal imbroglio has skewered timelines not just for setting dates for the IPL players mega auction but also issuance of the IPL Media Rights tender for the 2023-2027 cycle, which, it is worth recalling, BCCI secretary Jay Shah had stated “will be released immediately after the appointment of two new IPL teams”. That was in late September.
Speaking of the auction, as per a report, said auction will take place in the first week of February and Bangalore and Hyderabad are the frontrunners to host the mega event.
The IPL 2022 auction is all set to take place in the first week of February, Cricket.com reports. The report also stated that it will be a two-day affair as was the case in 2018 but the IPL GC is planning to make it a lot grander this time.
Meanwhile, the retention window for Lucknow and Ahmedabad began on December 1.
They can spend Rs 33 crore each on three players ahead of the auction. Just like in player retention, this too has a fee break-up: Rs 15 crore, Rs 11 crore and Rs 7 crore for the first, second and third players, respectively. Also, among the three players, two have to be Indian.
The Lucknow franchise has already roped in Andy Flower as their head coach and former India opener Gautam Gambhir as their mentor. Flower was working with Punjab Kings as an assistant coach for the past two seasons.
KL Rahul, who was Punjab’s skipper for the last two seasons, is also expected to move to the Sanjiv Goenka-owned franchise.
Earlier in a report on Cricbuzz, it was stated that the fixtures of the next season have not been finalised but the BCCI has internally conveyed to the key stakeholders that April 2 is the most likely day to begin the IPL 2022 campaign in Chennai.
A BCCI official has told the online cricket news platform that “things are expected to be cleared soon”. How soon? Maybe some time this week. With the silence from the BCCI becoming seriously deafening, it is unlikely that anyone would venture to hold their breath on that one.
Related reports
As BCCI dithers on CVC call, silence on IPL media rights ITT
VIEWPOINT: Fresh bids for 10th team fair option if CVC nixed
New IPL teams: CVC wins A’bad, Lucknow a trophy buy for RPSG
