Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi "insists he recently walked away from plans to create a rival governing body for cricket" but has warned the Int'l Cricket Council that this multibillion-pound project is "likely to go ahead and challenge its monopoly on the sport," according to Ali Martin of the London GUARDIAN. The Indian conglomerate Essel Group, which is owned by billionaire Subhash Chandra, and its subsidiary broadcaster Ten Sports have "begun registering companies and websites that carry "similar names to cricket boards, prompting fears among the existing establishment that a 'rebel' form of the sport" was set to be created. Modi, who was removed as IPL commissioner in '10 by the Board of Control for Cricket India, was "immediately rumoured to be behind the initiative," something both he and media tycoon Chandra, whose Zee TV network boasts a reported 730 million viewers in 169 countries across its 70 channels, have since "gone on record to deny." Now, Modi has "admitted he was involved in discussions with Essel on the idea for 'a number of months,'" with the project having been drawn up for “years,” only to withdraw because he "did not think it could be pulled off." But he insists that the 64-year-old Chandra, who is worth a reported £2.6B ($4B), is the "type of character who will press ahead regardless." While Modi claims he is "bound by a confidentiality agreement regarding details of the project, he confirmed that Chandra’s intention is not simply to set up a single unofficial tournament" but to "create a whole new global governing body for cricket that will feature both the Twenty20 and Test formats and reach out to smaller nations." He believes that a number of current global cricket players are already "aware of their intentions and interested, with wages set to be no issue" (GUARDIAN, 4/30).
STRONG TARGETS: In Melbourne, Chris Barrett wrote Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke and opener David Warner would be offered A$50M ($40M) contracts as "part of a plan hatched by an Indian conglomerate to take on the cricket establishment." It would "need to flex their financial muscle in an extraordinary way to coax the world's leading and best-paid players away from their national boards" but it has since emerged that its plans included targeting Clarke and Warner, among other players. Sources said that the plan devised was to "lure Clarke and Warner into the rebel structure as priority acquisitions with 10-year contracts" worth a staggering A$50M. However, the Indian company is not the only entity that has "entertained a challenge to the game's structure." Former Federation of Int'l Cricketers' Associations CEO Tim May said on Thursday that he had been "sounded out" by several other organizations about the "feasibility of them entering the cricket market in a similar fashion, and pointed to disillusion with the recently restructured ICC financial model that heavily favoured India, Australia and England as a factor." May: "There is a general dissatisfaction with the game's governance, how it's run and the inequity of the game's finances and there are other bodies around that would believe they can globalize the game of cricket in a more equitable fashion than the current administration" (THE AGE, 4/30).
