The Indian Cricket League (ICL) is a proposed private cricket league that will run parallel to the existing cricket league managed by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The format of ICL will be Twenty20.
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". 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 $1 million (Rs. 4.4 crore).
League structure
Each team will be coached by a former India player and will comprise four international, two Indian and eight budding domestic players. Essel Group is also planning to set up cricket academies all over the country. BCCI has been assured that it is free to draw from ICL's talent pool. The league will be functional by July-August 2007 and will start with Twenty20 format matches in November 2007.
Only professional, paid and accountable people have been hired to run the ICL. There will be no "honorary-positions" such as unpaid selectors. Former international cricketers including Kapil Dev, Tony Greig, Dean Jones and Kiran More have been hired as board members of the Indian Cricket League.The board positions will be paid positions.
2007 season
The inaugural season for the Indian Cricket League was scheduled to begin in October 2007 but later shifted to 2nd week of November with six club teams.
Six teams of private clubs
Each team will have a paid mentor, media manager, psychologist, physiotherapist
US$ 1 million for the winning club team
Twenty20 format
Cricketers as officials and players for ICL
ICL has planned to involve many former cricket players to run the league. Since one of the criticisms against the traditional cricketing system, run by BCCI under ICC, is that some crucial official postions are not occupied by cricketers, ICL seems to address this.
Former cricket players as officials
Executive Board
Dean Jones (Aus)
Kapil Dev (Ind)
Kiran More (Ind)
Tony Greig (Eng)
Coaches
Madan Lal (Ind)
Sandeep Patil (Ind)
Talent Scouts
Balwinder Sandhu (Ind)
Bharath Reddy (Ind)
Pranab Roy (Ind)
Rajesh Chauhan (Ind)
Shishir Hattangadi (Ind)
Mentors
Erapalli Prasanna (Ind)
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