The Board of Control for Cricket in India is gradually painting itself into a corner over the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League. In the hurry to get at the former chairman of the lucrative league, Mr Lalit Modi, the board also went after the two teams perceived to have had close links with him and kicked the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab out of the IPL over non-disclosure of ownership details. Both teams successfully challenged the move and have been re-instated by first a one-man tribunal constituted by the Bombay high court, and thereafter confirmed by a larger bench. This in effect means that IPL-4 is, for now at least, a 10-team competition, thus scuppering plans to make it an eight-team tournament by bringing in two new franchises in the form of Pune and Kochi. Having faced a resounding rebuff to its actions in eliminating former champions Royals and the Preity Zinta-backed Kings XI, the BCCI is faced with a quandary — to continue down this path, or accept for now the fact that their move has backfired. Of course, the Bombay high court has imposed stringent financial conditions for both the re-instated squads, but that is unlikely to stand in the way of their owners fielding teams in 2011. The court’s decision has also brought in its wake further uncertainty. For one, the fresh player auction — with the initial three-year lock-in period for all eight original teams having expired at the end of the 2010 season — may not take place as scheduled in early January if the BCCI decides to press on with its own legal challenge.
There is now talk that the auction will take place during the course of the 2011 ICC World Cup but that would in turn irk almost every other cricket board around the world who would not want their players to be distracted by their valuations in the course of the game’s biggest event. It would also give team owners no time at all to fulfil commercial obligations as there is a very narrow window between the end of the World Cup and the start of IPL-4. Then, what the format of the 2011 tournament will take is again in doubt. To be sure, the board — and the governing council of the IPL — had catered for a 10-team tournament to start with but that format had faced opposition from the original set of team owners. Then, with the disqualification of the Royals and Kings XI, things appeared to return to the old set of games, but all that appears to be up in the air now. In a wider perspective, other cricket boards must be having a quiet chuckle at seeing the most lucrative property in the game in tatters. Spurred by the success of the IPL in its first three seasons, every board has scrambled to put together similar properties but nowhere has it caught the imagination — and purses — of the paying public as it has here in India. To see that prize plum now swinging in the winds of uncertainty would give competing units hope that the talent that had so far focused almost exclusively on India would now be available for their prospective T20 money-spinning leagues. In that sense, the BCCI’s recent moves may well be a salutary lesson on how not to let too much power become concentrated in too few hands, for there is no doubt that Mr Lalit Modi ran the IPL like a personal fiefdom. The witch-hunt that has followed has only served to hurt Indian cricket’s image around the world, if for its sheer vindictiveness, if nothing else.