BCCI ended its contract with Kochi for breach of agreement. IPL-5 will now have 9 teams.
The Kochi conundrum is back to Square One. On Monday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) terminated its franchise contract with the Kochi Tuskers Kerala citing ‘irremediable breach of agreement by the latter’. It effectively means that the fifth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will have only nine teams.
As reported by this paper on Monday, the decision was taken at the BCCI’s AGM. The board said it had no plans of holding an auction for a new team. BCCI president N Srinivasan said the board was invoking the bank guarantee as it had interests of various stake-holders, including the players’, to protect.
“Because of the irremediable breach committed by the franchise, the BCCI has decided to terminate the contract,” Srinivasan said.
The decision means the players associated with the team will not get to play in the IPL 5 but the Rs156 crore bank guarantee encashed by the board will be used for the payment of their fee.
A termination letter sent on Monday to Kochi Cricket Private Limited (KCPL) and Rendezvous Sports World (RSW) talks of a certain Clause 8.4 of in their agreement, which ‘requires’ them to submit the bank guarantee before March 27, 2011. The Board terminated the contract ‘in view of the breach in the aforesaid agreement.’
The termination order has evoked strong reaction from the franchise officials. “We’ve no option but to seek the legal recourse,” Mukesh Patel, a key member of the consortium, told DNA. “We’ll need to study the order but we will not take it lying down.”
Patel added that its bank guarantee, worth Rs156 crore, was with the board. “It is valid till September 27. So, where is the default?” he asked.
The Kochi team, led by Mahela Jayawardene, has perenially been mired in controversy, first for its association with the then union minister Shashi Tharoor and his wife Sunanda Pushkar and later for the infighting among the various members of the consortium.
Previously, the team owners had threatened to take legal action against the BCCI for reducing the number of matches to 74 from 94. They had also demanded that the team should be allowed to move to Ahmedabad as it was not in a position to operate in Kochi because of various issues, including security and business-related problems.
Meanwhile, Srinivasan said the IPL governing council will take further course of action but clearly hinted that there would not be another auction. “Given the volume of cricket in the IPL, we may not go for a new team,” the new board president said.
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