The
Indian Cricket League (ICL) is a private cricket league that runs parallel to the existing cricket league managed by BCCI. Matches in the ICL follow the Twenty20 format. Tau Devi Lal stadium in Panchkula, near Chandigarh, hosted the ICL for the 2007 season. The stadium has a capacity of 20,000 and the ICL plans to lease the stadium for 10 years. A similar initiative has been launched in United States by the PayAutoMata group but more details on this is awaited.
History
Zee Telefilms (part of Subhash Chandra promoted Essel group)
bid for the telecast
rights of the biggest international cricket event - 2003 World Cup. Although the highest bid, it was unsuccessful. Subhash Chandra again bid for telecast rights again in 2004 and ended up in an inconclusive court battle. Last March, he bid again for the 2006-10 rights and once again lost. His response: the ICL. “They denied us the cricket content,” says Himanshu Mody, business head of ICL and Zee’s sports channels. “So, we had to create our own content”.On Zee Telefilms announced that it would be partner with infrastructure major IL&FS to create a new ambitious cricket league, Indian Cricket League (ICL).This league will have a prize money of $ 1
million for the winner. ICL was set up with a Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) corpus, and would initially comprise six teams to be expanded to 16 in three years. This will make ICL the richest professional league in the country with an annual prize of $1 million (Rs. 4.4 crore). ICL has already signed a number of major
players but is yet to reveal their names. On July 24th, some great international names cropped up such as Brian Lara. The ICL has confirmed that Brian Lara and Inzaman-Ul-Haq has signed up and will be joining the league.However, the Pakistan Cricket Board warned its players to stay away from the league. Imran Farhat chose to opt out of his Pakistan Central contract to sign with the Indian Cricket League.Former Pakistan captain Javed Miandad said he is not able to understand why PCB is not allowing its players to play in the league and why it is threatening players with a lifetime ban. The PCB subsequently banned players involved in the ICL from playing domestic cricket, a move that prompted players, notably Farhat and Taufeeq Umar to threaten court action.
2007 season
The inaugural season for the Indian Cricket League was scheduled to begin in October 2007 but later shifted to start from November 30 with six club teams. The Chennai Superstars emerged as the inaugural ICL champions, beating the Chandigarh Lions by 12 runs in the final.<9> Superstars bowler Shabbir Ahmed was declared Man of the Match for claiming four wickets, including a hat-trick while Superstars batsman Ian Harvey was declared Player of the Tournament for scoring 266 runs in 7 matches and taking 9 wickets.
Six teams of private clubs
Mumbai Champs
Chennai Superstars
Chandigarh Lions
Hyderabad Heroes
Kolkata Tigers
Delhi Jets
Each team has a paid mentor, media manager, psychologist, physiotherapist
US$ 1 million for the winning club team
Twenty20 format
Ombudsman looks into grievances of players
More reviews about the Rediff