Kochi team cleared for 2011 IPL
The Indian cricket board on Sunday cleared the faction-ridden Kochi franchise to play in the Indian Premier League’s fourth season beginning on April 8, ensuring that the number of teams in the Twenty20 competition is back to eight.
The decision was taken at the IPL governing council’s meeting in Mumbai which had been specially convened to scrutinise the consortium’s last-minute tweak to its shareholding pattern last week, which had come just hours before the franchise was set to be expelled.
“The IPL governing council confirmed that the Kochi franchisee had satisfactorily responded to the notice issued to them by the BCCI, and decided that the franchise would play in the IPL from 2011 onwards,” BCCI secretary N. Srinivasan said after the two-hour-long meeting with a few Kochi owners.
Under the new ownership formula, the 26 per cent sweat equity given to the promoters Rendez-vous Sports World Pvt Ltd — the bone of contention between the rival factions of the franchise — has been slashed to 10 per cent.
The remaining 16 per cent has been distributed equally to firms Anchor Earth, Rosy Blue Diamond, Film Wave and Parinee Developers and Kerala-based businessman Vivek Venugopal.
The franchise has also been rechristened as IPL Kochi Pvt Ltd.
“This is a major win for us. We’ll now discuss our future course of action in the next few days,” Rendezvous group chief executive Satyajit Gaikwad told this newspaper on Sunday.
Before the compromise, the investors of the franchise, which was bought for a staggering sum of `1,533.33 crores, had written to the BCCI informing it of their intention of withdrawing from the IPL.
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