BCCI rules out participation in the 2010 Commonwealth Games

MUMBAI: The Cricket Board on Saturday ruled out participation in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi citing a packed schedule of the Indian team under the ICC's Future Tours Programme.

The BCCI Working Committee also formed a sub-committee to deal with players' contract but there was no discussion on nominating its chief Sharad Pawar as the consensus candidate for the post of president of International Cricket Council.

"The working committee discussed the invitation to take part in the 2010 Commonwealth Games and felt that the Future Tours Programme as it stands now is too crowded and would not lend itself to participate in the Games," BCCI treasurer N Srinivasan said.

On the issue of players' contract, Srinivasan said a committee had been formed comprising himself, I S Bindra, Shashank Manohar, Secretary Niranjan Shah and Chief Administrative Officer Ratnakar Shetty to finalise the details.

"At this moment I can't say what the parameters will be but we will try to find the right balance. The board members were concerned with the performance of the team and felt that players should be motivated to do well," the official said.

Manohar had said after the Indian team's massive loss in the first ODI in South Africa that the players should not get even a single penny as match fees. 

"The contracts will be finalised in the intervening period between the team's return and the World Cup," Srinivasan said, adding "it will be a comprehensive package, taking performance also into consideration."

The committee also approved the Tours and Programmes Fixtures Committee's allotment of matches for the forthcoming visit by the West Indies and Sri Lankan teams to play two four-match ODI series against India.

West Indies will play at Nagpur (Jan 21), Cuttack (Jan 24), Chennai (Jan 27) and Vadodara (Jan 30) while the matches against Sri Lanka have been allotted to Pune (Feb 8), Rajkot (Feb 11), Goa (Feb 14) and Vishakhapatnam (Feb 17).

"The committee also approved the budget for the tours of Bangladesh of the Indian team after the World Cup and to England later," Srinivasan said.

But he said there was no discussion on proposing Pawar's name as a candidate to take over as the next president of the ICC after its secretary Niranjan Shah had said earlier it was one of the matters that would be discussed at the meeting.

"That item was not on the agenda of the meeting and neither did it come up for discussion," Srinivasan said.

Shah had said that the other three South Asian full members of the ICC, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, were in support of Pawar becoming the next chief of the ICC after current president Percy Sonn (South Africa) completes his term.

The deadline for submitting a candidate's name to the ICC's nomination committee headed by former BCCI chief A C Muthiah is January 1, 2007, while Pawar, who chaired today's meeting, had been non-committal on the issue.

Former Test cricketer and secretary of the Karnataka Cricket Association, Brijesh Patel, was also named in a small committee to decide on the modalities and procedures to be adopted while approving grants to talented sports persons from other disciplines for which BCCI has already earmarked a corpus of Rs 50 crore.

"It was also decided to give a bonus of Rs one lakh per player to the members of the women's cricket team that defeated England and won the recent Asia Cup tournament in Jaipur," Srinivasan said.

The committee also approved a budget of Rs 36 lakh for conducting a South Asian Inter Varsity Cricket Tournament to celebrate the 150th year of the Mumbai University.