Mumbai : The cream of Australian cricketing talent, led by captain Ricky Ponting and vice captain Adam Gilchrist, together with eleven other Aussies and Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi and Loots Bosman of South Africa have signed on to participate in the Indian Premeir League (IPL), which kicks off in April next year.

These players, along with 29 others from New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and West Indies who signed earlier, will participate in the league matches of the inaugural IPL Twenty20 championship, scheduled to commence from April next year, said a release here today.

Those who signed up today, apart from Australian captain Ricky Ponting and vice captain Adam Gilchrist, included Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi and South African batsman Loots Bosman.

The IPL will also witness a star-studded line up of Australians like Andrew Symonds, Michael Clarke, Mike Hussey, Brett Lee, Mathew Hayden, Nathan Bracken, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Jhonson, Simon Katich, Jason Gilliseppe and Cameron White taking the total of international cricketers that have signed up to play in the IPL to 44.

IPL had already signed the likes of Shane Warne, Justin Langer and Glen McGarth of Australia; Stephen Fleming, Daniel Vettori, Scott Styris and Jacob Oram of New Zealand; Mahela Jayawardene, Sanath Jayasuriya and Chaminda Vaas of Sri Lanka; Graeme Smith, Herschelle Gibbs, Ashwell Prince, Albie Morkel, A B deVilliers and Shaun Pollock of South Africa; Shivnarine Chanderpaul of West Indies; and Mohammed Yousuf and Shoaib Akhtar of Pakistan for participation in the inaugural tournament.

Indian Premeir League chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi said ”We have great pleasure in announcing today, the induction of some of the finest talent from the World One-Day Champions Team Australia. I am sure that the cricket loving public of India would cherish the opportunity to see the world champions turn out for their local teams. The induction of the prodigious Aussie talent, I am sure, will add a whole new dimension to the cricket that it played in the Indian Premeir League.”

For the past three years Lalit Modi has answered to the Chief Marketing Officer, or CMO, tag at the BCCI. Already, the BCCI’s revenues have grown ten folds and it is ready to roll out a new brand-the Indian Premeir League, or IPL. Modi said that as many as 80 entities are keen to own the eight teams and there are still a lot more headroom to increase cricket revenues.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Lalit Modi:

Q: You are the Vice President, in Charge of Marketing, and pretty much the CMO of BCCI, isn’t it?

A: Yes, I would say that.

Q: Can you tell us about the newest brand that you are going to launch, which is the IPL?

A: We are going to invite prospective people, who would like to own teams. At the last count, we had close to about 80 people wanting to buy eight teams.

Q: We heard that it is for about USD 40-60 million per team. Is there a bidding process and how is it working?

A: I think that is cheap. We have laid it down at a minimum price, which will probably be USD 50 million per team. But it is not a number that has been pulled out of the hat, and just put on the table.

The objective is that the team owners must make money to make it flourish and to make it successful. So, by the third year of operation, they must be cash positive or on the worst-case scenario, by the fourth year of operation. So, there will be two-fold revenues for them. One is the intrinsic value going up and second is the actual money coming in.

Q: Are you looking at eight teams?

A: Only eight teams to start with. The way it would work is that a team would be attaching itself to a city. Actual franchise, or the owner, would decide which city he wants to be in.

Q: What about the ticket sells and the merchandise? Will all this be shared between the IPL and the prospective team owner?

A: We have two sorts of revenues. One is called the centralized revenues and the other one is called the local revenues.

The centralized revenue is where we can broadcast revenue. The team naming rights, like we have the Barclays Premeir League and ground sponsorship rights, that goes into the central poll. Probably, close to 70-80% of that will flow down to the team owners and 20-30% of that would be kept by the BCCI. We are just finetuning the model.

Then, there is something called localized revenues. The localized revenue is your gate revenue; including the ticket revenue, food and beverage revenue, team sponsorship revenues and merchandising revenues that will be associated with the game, at that particular ground. That revenue stays with the franchise owner, so when you actually look at it, the franchise owner has two sets of income. The third is the PR value and the fourth is the intrinsic value going up, in terms of selling the teams in the future. Its cost, on the other hand, is local cost.

Q: We know you have announced about 30 odd players so far. These players are contracted to the IPL and if I am a team owner, then do I buy these players from you?

A: The objective is twofold. Today, when we are launching in the first phase, there is always going to be a dilemma as to where do we get the players from. So, when we have eight new owners, they will not know where to go and buy the players, whom to contact to get the players.

So, we have taken from the ICC charts the top-50 players and said that we are going to go out and contract them. Right now, I have contracted about 34 players.  Indian icons, which are primarily from a city, will be attached to their team to start with for the first few years. After that, the owners can decide whether they can sell or not sell.

Q: This seems to be a really exciting plan and you have got all other international cricket boards and the ICC to endorse your plans. You have got to admit that it was a reaction to the ICL.

A: I do not agree at all.

Q: I clearly remember you and the BCCI voting at the ICC, against the Twenty 20 format. You were saying that the Twenty 20 format is really not something you want to do right now, because ODIs are doing so well for us?

A: That is not true. We did say that we are planning a domestic tournament. We cannot afford to play a World Cup, unless we have played the game in India ourselves. Unless we have a domestic structure in place, we should not be indulging in something at that time.

When we came into power two years ago, the first statement we said was that we are launching a Twenty 20 League. When we put out our first tender for media rights and ground rights, we clearly marked out in our opening paragraph that BCCI will soon be launching its own Twenty 20 League, which is outside the purview of this contract and so it isn’t something that is going to happen overnight.

It has taken us two years to get where we are as far as Zee or ICL is concerned. They have been in negotiation with us for the last year and a half for this. When we told them it is not going to be possible to be doing it with you, we are not giving it out, they decided to go out and announce their own and it was not a knee-jerk reaction.

In fact, the Indian Cricket League is registered with me as a trademark 1995 company. So, this is the project that I started in 1995.

Q: Did you see it at that point as Twenty 20?

A: No, I did not. It was a 50-50 and identical to the IPL structure. So, it was not a knee-jerk reaction and actually we had a team working on this.

Q: ICL has finally announced its dates for this tournament, November 30 to December 16. You all are talking about April 2008. Is there any sense that you want to advance your timeline?

A: No, we cannot afford to advance our timeline. We have a very tight schedule, ours is a 44-day tournament, with 59 games floated in and it is a lot of movement of people across eight cities. They are playing two games everyday in two different cities and there is the movement of television crews and players.

Q: Are these IPL rights going to be coming up for bidding, like all other BCCI rights? Are they just going to Neo as that seems to be the perception. Neo Sports have got the rights, till 2010, of all international cricket played in India. The neutral territory rights went to them, when that went into dispute, and now is IPL going to them?

A: That is not true. Neo Sports only has rights till March 2010, for all games played in India, on an international basis. They have no rights post that.

They bought at the one-off the international rights of neutral territories, when Zee went out only for the past few series.

Q: Have you given them any Twenty 20 International that is scheduled?

A: We only have one international schedule and nobody is going to come out and buy one match because it requires television crews and production. So, we gave it to them as a one off. Going forward, as far as IPL is concerned, they have no rights at all. In fact, they are a totally new tender.

Q: We have heard reportedly, that they are aggrieved by the fact that they have no rights to IPL and might expect you to relook at the contract that they have already got, like you did post Prasar Bharti’s move?

A: The reason we gave them compensation, as far as the Prasar Bharti was concerned, was because we had an understanding with Prasar Bharti that test matches will not be shown on Doordarshan and on DTH.

That was an undertaking we gave to Neo, at the time of signing the contract, because we could not fulfill that part of the bargain. So, we gave a concession as far as that is concerned. But I can very clearly tell you that Neo will have absolutely zero rights, going forward, as far as IPL is concerned. They will be like any other bidder who will come up in the market place and bid for those rights.

Q: But there is also a sense that perhaps Neo has the right to refuse the rights to match any offers made and rollover of the contract, that they already have with you, for all international cricket in India?

A: No, that is absolutely not true again. They have the first right of negotiation with us for six months prior to the end of the contract.

Q: Is it only for that particular contract and not for anything else?

A: For that particular contract and for most of our contracts, so they can make an offer to us. If  we like the offer, we may accept it. If we do not like the offer, we will go forward with the tender process and offer it to whoever is the highest bidder. They have no matching rights, as far as that is concerned, or rollover rights as you put it.

Q: What about Zee Sports, because there are other reports floating around that Zee Sports is going to be banned from bidding for any of your properties? Is that true?

A: That is absolutely true. Zee Sports or Zee-affiliated companies will not be allowed to participate in any tender process as far as the BCCI is concerned, going forward.

Zee owes the BCCI a large sum of money. They have defaulted on the money. As long as they make good the money they have defaulted on assigned contract, then only we will look at considering that. But till that time, Zee Group will not be allowed to participate in any tender.

Q: It is not because of the ICL?

A: Absolutely, if they make good of our money that they defaulted on, we will happily welcome them to the table.

Q: So are you saying that Neo Sports is not the most favoured broadcaster, Zee Sports is currently bad boy broadcaster?

A: No, there are many more. You have to understand that, as far as IPL is concerned, we not only have ESPN and Star Sports. There is also Sony and you cannot rule it out. There are three-four new boys on the table, who are looking at very aggressively at the space, and want to come in to the space.

Q: What happened to your project-BCCI TV? Do you have the money?

A: We have the money without doubt. If it would have been left to me, I would definitely go out and launch the BCCI TV. It is one project, that I have been pursuing and will continue to pursue with the BCCI, but it will take us some time to get to that.

People are happier in locking in the revenues, than taking risks at this point in time. As we stabilize ourselves and as the BCCI goes forward, people will have more confidence of doing it themselves.

Melbourne, Oct 27 : Australian fast bowler Jason Gillespie is the latest entrant to join the Indian Premeir league (IPL), the professional Twenty20 league venture of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Gillespie is one of the Cricket Australia’s 25 contracted players, and said he was excited by the competition.

“I am at this stage of my career where I am looking forward to new challenges,” Gillespie said.

“I think this competition will be a lot of fun,” The Australian quoted Gillespie, as saying.

Gillespie also said that if he plays for Australia again, it would be in the longer version of the game.

“I have played my last one-day game for Australia, that is for sure, but I believe I can offer something at the Test level if that opportunity arises,” he said.

Gillespie, who has played 71 Tests and taken 259 wickets at an average of 26.13, thinks that the selectors would look at younger bowlers for the summer.

“When I was a young fast bowler, the Australian selectors persevered with me and I think they should do the same for whoever is picked,” he said.

“It takes a while to find your feet at Test level and I was grateful for the opportunities and I hope selectors do the same now.”

The IPL has so far signed 25 foreign players, including Gillespie’s former bowling partner Glenn McGrath.

The Twenty20 competition, consisting of teams under the BCCI, will be held in April 2008. The league has the prize money of three million dollars. (ANI)

NEW DELHI - India’s new-found fascination for Twenty20 cricket has turned into a tug-of-war as money, power and court battles overshadow the country’s most popular sport. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is determined to be the sole crusader of the lucrative crowd-pulling Twenty20 format in cricket-mad India despite its secretary Niranjan Shah earlier describing Twenty20 as a “waste of time.”

This apparent change of heart had nothing to do with Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s young Team India winning the inaugural Twenty20 world championships in South Africa in September, an event Indian officials once strongly opposed.

It had everything to do with the unveiling in May of the unofficial multi-million-dollar so-called rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL), bankrolled by the country’s largest media group, Zee Telefilms.A rattled BCCI banned cricketers signing up to the ICL from representing the country, forcing the rebel body to file an ongoing case challenging the BCCI’s monopoly over the sport.

The BCCI also drew up its own three-million-dollar Indian Premeir League (IPL) with the blessing of the International Cricket Council and supported by boards around the world.And so began a game of oneupmanship, lapped up greedily by the media and showing no signs of abating with no apparent concern for the effects it could have on players, their international commitments and the sport in India.

The Zee-backed ICL presented India’s only World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev as its chief executive, while the BCCI’s IPL paraded the country’s other legend, Sunil Gavaskar, and popular commentator Ravi Shastri as members of its governing council.At the moment the IPL is seemingly winning the battle in terms of getting star players to sign up.

It says it has on board Test captains Graeme Smith of South Africa, Daniel Vettori of New Zealand, Shoaib Malik of Pakistan and the entire Team India.The IPL also persuaded ICL’s main draw, Pakistani star batsman Mohammad Yousuf, to break his contract with the rebel league and sign up with the official body, prompting the ICL to serve legal papers on the player.

The best the ICL has managed so far are retired international stars, headed by West Indian great Brian Lara and Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq, along with a slew of domestic has-beens.Both leagues — despite obvious deep pockets — have found it easier to sign up big names than finalise start dates and other details of the events they plan to stage.

The only real concrete fact is that both leagues will feature Twenty20 matches between franchised teams made up of international players and young promising Indians.The ICL may begin in November and the BCCI is looking to start the IPL in April next year, although like much in this saga, nothing is certain.

The beleaguered Asia Cup limited-overs tournament, already put off twice before and now scheduled to be held in Pakistan in April-May, faces an uncertain future if the IPL is held at the same time and there are concerns the players may end up playing too much cricket.Unsurprisingly, not everyone is impressed at the potential impact the leagues could have on cricket.

“If the proto-typical young cricketer is happy signing up for IPL franchises and making his money there, is he going to bother playing five-day cricket?”, veteran columnist Ashok Malik said.Cricinfo, the game’s leading website, said: “Money could make Twenty20 the most lucrative form of cricket any aspiring cricketer wants to play.

“So what that would do to cricket skills and talent pools for longer versions of the game is anyone’s guess.“Also, it could change the way we look at cricket. Teams based on regional affiliations will be replaced by teams based on commerce, players playing not for local pride but for top dollar.

“That’s how football has grown in the last 20 years — and not everyone’s happy with the shape it’s in today.”

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik and team mates Younis Khan and Mohammad Asif have signed up for the inaugural Indian Premeir League (IPL), organisers said on Thursday.

New Zealand wicketkeeper-batsman Brendon McCullum has also joined, taking to 29 the number of foreign players who have committed to the lucrative Twenty20 event which starts in April.

The 44-day tournament will feature eight franchises, the IPL said in a statement, with each squad containing 16 players.

The $3 million (1.46 million pound) IPL was launched by the Indian cricket board in September, with support from other national boards to counter an unofficial version planned next month.

Those already signed up include international captains Graeme Smith of South Africa and Mahela Jayawardene of Sri Lanka and Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf.

Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik along with fellow batsman Younus Khan and fast bowler Mohammad Asif have joined the official Indian Premier League (IPL).

New Zealand wicketkeeper-batsman Brendon McCullum is also the IPL’s latest signing.

“Malik, Khan, Asif and McCullum signed up with the IPL, taking the number of international cricketers to 29,” BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi was quoted as saying to espnstar.com.

South African all-rounder Shaun Pollock, New Zealand paceman Jacob Oram and Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar have also agreed to play in the league.

The Indian Premier League has secured the services of South Africa all-rounder Shaun Pollock and Pakistan paceman Shoaib Akhtar.

The Twenty20 format league, which is due to get underway in April, was set up by the India Cricket Board to counter the rebel Indian Cricket League that is to feature West Indian legend Brian Lara. 

And, with the backing of the Australian, England, South African and Pakistan boards, the IPL has attracted some top names from the world of cricket. 

In addition to Pollock and Shoaib, international skippers Graeme Smith, Mahela Jayawardene and Daniel Vettori are also among 25 foreign stars to sign up. 

The debut IPL season will start with eight teams, while organisers hope to double the field by 2010. 

Brendon McCullum has joined a growing number of New Zealand test cricketers signing up to play in the Indian Premeir League (IPL) Twenty20 tournament.

The Black Caps wicketkeeper was unveiled among the latest signings for the International Cricket Council (ICC) competition - establishment’s answer to the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) venture. The acquisition of McCullum comes hard on the heels of allrounder Jacob Oram’s signing this week.

Former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming, his successor Daniel Vettori and middle order batsmen Scott Styris have already joined a host of current internationals to spearhead the $4.5 million tournament. Current Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik and two of his teammates Younis Khan and Mohd Asif were also signed up today along with McCullum.

The quartet increase the number of internationals contracted to the franchise-based competition to 29. More signings are expected next week, with New Zealand’s premier fast bowler Shane Bond a potential target.

The inaugural tournament is scheduled for April and will comprise 59 matches over 44 days. Players would be spread among eight franchises featuring Indian players.

A Pakistan Cricket Board official will visit India to study the model of BCCI’s Indian Premeir League (IPL), set to be launched next year.

PCB Director, Marketing and Communications, Ehsan Hameed Malik will attend a couple of presentations to be made by the IPL organisers in a bid to help the PCB launch its own league.

“We are planning to launch our own league as soon as possible and believe that a lot could be learnt from the IPL project,” Malik was quoted as saying by ‘The News’ on Thursday.

Malik, however, declined that Pakistan’s Twenty20 league would be a replica of the IPL.

“We will certainly incorporate some features already existing in the IPL, but our league will not be an exact copy of it. We will get a chance to make it a different yet successful event by following IPL,” he said.

The BCCI will host the IPL in April next year. The league will be a franchise-model where corporates and sponsors will be allowed to buy and run teams. Player buy-outs will be an added feature, something that cricket is not accustomed to.

The top four teams will make the semifinals with the winners contesting in the championship match of the event that will have a prize basket of USD three million.

The BCCI-run Indian Premeir League’s contracts have been dubbed as “the worst contracts in professional sport” by the head of the New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association.

Heath Mills, the association’s manager, said Scott Styris had signed the deal but he was unsure if skipper Daniel Vettori had already committed.

Mills said the IPL and New Zealand Cricket (NZC) had pressurised the players to accept the lucrative three-year deals or the offers would be withdrawn.

“We recommended they didn’t sign the contract put in front of them and I’m not sure Daniel has signed,” Mills was quoted as saying to the Dominion Post.

“The contracts put in front of the players are the worst contract I’ve seen in professional sport. Players around the world have been signing it and they have no idea what they are signing away. It does not stipulate the rights they are giving away to Indian cricket. I’m concerned our guys signing it will put them in breach of their NZC contracts.

“I don’t think it is a very good contract at all. It is a one and a half page document. Our contracts are 100 pages long and people are very aware of their obligations and restrictions.”