A leading Indian broadcast and entertainment group unveiled plans for a professional cricket league on Tuesday. Subhash Chandra, chairman of Essel Group which controls the country's biggest listed media firm Zee Telefilms, told a news conference in New Delhi that the Indian Cricket League, co-promoted by Indian financial group IL&FS, would offer annual prize money of $1 million.
"It troubles me that a country with more than a billion cricket fans and millions of cricket enthusiasts fares so poorly at the international stage," said Chandra, who took the Indian cricket board to court two years ago over a telecast rights issue.
The national board is due to meet later this week to discuss the Indian team's first-round exit from the World Cup in the Caribbean. The league, to be launched later this year, will comprise six teams in the inaugural edition which will be played in Twenty-20 and one-day formats. Each team will have four foreign players, two current Indian players and eight budding Indian players. "A professional league is the need of the hour as is a killer instinct in the players," Chandra said. The Indian board said it had received a communication from Chandra on the proposed league.
The board's two-day meeting, beginning on Friday, is expected to decide the future of several senior members of the World Cup team and coach Greg Chappell.