The Board of Control for Cricket in India announced the unanimous decision after an emergency meeting Sunday. The Royals, led by Australian great Shane Warne and winners of the inaugural tournament in 2008, and Kings have been at the center of corruption allegations involving the league’s former commissioner Lalit Modi.

The BCCI suspended Modi earlier this year and set up a committee in July to investigate bribery allegations in the 2008 awarding of the bids for franchises in the lucrative Twenty20 league.

But BCCI president Shashank Manohar said the elimination of the Jaipur-based Royals and Kings XI Punjab, which has Australian paceman Brett Lee and Sri Lankan wicketkeeper-batsman Kumar Sangakkara under contract, had nothing to do with Modi.

“The decision to terminate the contract of Punjab and Rajasthan franchises were taken purely based on legal opinion we received and the breaches committed by these franchises,” he told reporters after the board announced its unanimous decision.

Those breaches, he said, involved unsanctioned changes in shareholding patterns, or differences between the names of the bidders and those who eventually entered the agreements.

Modi has denied any wrongdoing in the bidding process, and says his running of the highly successful IPL was completely transparent.

The BCCI issued a notice to Kochi, asking that it resolve internal disputes over the ownership shares within 10 days and incorporate.

Dozens of international cricket stars are contracted to the Indian Premier League. There was no immediate indication if the clubs would be replaced or what would happen to the players contracted to the Royals and Kings. The IPL had been expected to expand from eight to 10 clubs in 2011, its fourth season.

But the next season is already in doubt, with Rajasthan considering a legal challenge to the decision.

Raj Kundra, one of the co-owners of the Rajasthan club, told Press Trust of India: “I don’t see IPL 4 happening if the BCCI treats other teams like this.”

“The termination of the contract by BCCI is shocking. We are seriously thinking of a legal action. We need to see a copy of the termination notice and study it,” Kundra said.

In a stream of posts on Twitter, Modi urged the clubs to take control of the IPL and criticized the president of the BCCI for taking “a path of vengeance” that will damage the game.

“The Game is bigger than the organisation. The Owners should get together and Run the League, ” he tweeted. “IPL should not be destroyed.”

Modi accused the BCCI of having “total disregard for franchisees” and had “lost the ability to administer sensibly.”

“The status of all teams is the same. They were all approved. There is no ambiguity as far as that is concerned. The action it totally illegal,” he tweeted. The BCCI is “hell bent on destroying something that we as Indians are proud of _ The IPL. So as to satisfy there personal Agendas.”

Warne, who woke up to the news in England and was returning to Australia on Sunday, asked “What now for the youngsters”?

Warne also used the microblogging site to criticize the BCCI’s decision.

“The royals gave young unknown Indian players a chance,” he wrote. “3 seasons ago royals won the first ever ipl, underdogs come good what a story, it helped give credibility to the competition !!! Now look.”

“Such sad news for us and our loyal fans, shattering to all.”

Rajasthan and Kings XI Punjab were two of the original eight clubs in the tournament which revitalized cricket globally and sparked a range of other Twenty20 events around the world. The game is popular because it can produce a result in three hours, making it much shorter than the standard 50-over one-day internationals or the five-day test matches.

The bidding for the franchises attracted high-profile business owners and Bollywood celebrities in cricket mad India.

Rajasthan Royals was owned by Emerging Media and acquired for $67 million.

Indian actress Priety Zinta is one of four owners of the Kings XI Punjab. The group paid $76 million for the Mohali-based team.

Source: Yahoo Cricket

Manohar said the former cricketers on the governing council – Sunil Gavaskar, MAK Pataudi and Ravi Shastri – would formulate a plan for the 2011 IPL tournament after consultations with the players, coaches and franchises.

“In the last 15 days, there were lot of allegations and counter allegations made through media, as a result of which, the board looked into the allegations levelled and took a decision to issue a show cause notice to Lalit Modi, and pending inquiry, decided to suspend him,” Manohar said at a press conference following the meeting in Mumbai. “The board will hold, after receiving a reply from Mr. Modi, an inquiry if necessary. If the reply or Mr Modi convinces the members, the proceedings will be dropped …

“Shetty has been asked to look into the the records because many of the documents are missing. Every day the income-tax department is asking for records and we don’t have them in our custody.” Manohar said it was necessary to suspend Modi in order to hold a “free and fair enquiry”. “Suspension is not a punishment – he [Modi] is kept away from the functioning of the board to ensure free and fair enquiry,” he said.

Modi’s temporary successor, Amin, is a highly successful Vadodara-based industrialist, whose Alembic pharmaceuticals company lends its name to one of the city’s three first-class cricket grounds. He has been on the BCCI board for the past few years and has served on its marketing committee.

The IPL governing council, minus its suspended chairman, met at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai to discuss the issue of Modi, who was sent a charge sheet after the tournament’s final, and the possibility of an IPL without him.

Absent from the meeting were Modi and Farooq Abdullah, the president of the Jammu & Kashmir Cricket Association. Those present included Manohar, vice-president Arun Jaitley, secretary N Srinivasan, media and finance committee chairman Rajiv Shukla and IPL vice-chairman Niranjan Shah.

The meeting started at 10 am, just a few hours after the BCCI sent Modi a show-cause notice, and a charge-sheet specifying the allegations, that capped two weeks of raging controversy over financial wrong-doings in IPL. Modi was asked by the BCCI to reply to the show-cause notice within 15 days.

Source: Cricinfo

The mid-innings strategic time-out, which came in for widespread criticism after it was introduced in the 2009 season, had been reduced from seven-and-a-half minutes per side for the third season.

Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman, admitted that the league was forced to review the duration of the timeout after important players including Sachin Tendulkar had disapproved of the long break because it hampered a team’s momentum.

“That was a trial process,” Modi said. “Now we have changed it to total of five minutes split into two-and-a-half minutes for each time. The bowling team can take it from overs six to eight while we have noticed that the batting team always need to discuss with their team-mates at the end stages, so they can opt for the timeout between overs 11-16.”

While introducing the tactical time-out, Modi stated its purpose was allow teams to discuss strategies instead of having to spend time on it during the course of the game, and hence minimise match-time delays. Critics disagreed instantly, saying it was nothing but another channel for the league to make more money.

But the franchises, some of whom had originally not accepted the interruption openly, now say the timeout is necessary from the both the cricketing and the financial perspective. “[The] strategy break is good because you need to get more revenues in it,” one of the franchise officals said. “Ultimately the entertainment part is great but within a short break you have to get the revenues otherwise the IPL can’t survive.”

Even if teams agree the timeout is beneficial, some are still trying to come to grips with it. “You cannot do much in such a short time. You cannot reinvent a wheel,” said TA Sekar, director of cricket for Mumbai Indians, who was with earlier with Delhi Daredevils for the first two years of the IPL. “Invariably each time there was a break players lost concentration. It is quite an innovative thing they are trying, it may help, it may not.”

But Sekar admitted breaks were important in the Twenty20 due to the rapid manner in which changes occur. “Twenty20 is a game where execution of your plan is very, very important because you don’t have the time to comeback,” he said. “So [the] strategy break may be helpful because somebody inside [the dug-out] might see something happening which the players inside may not see.”

Nagraj Gollapudi is an assistant editor at Cricinfo.

Bidding starts from a base price of US$225m, more than four times the US$50m base price that the original eight franchises were auctioned for in 2008. Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, previously announced that “a very famous football club in the UK is very interested in bidding” but that has so far proved little more than speculation.

It would be a major boon for the MCC, and chief executive Keith Bradshaw travelled alongside Anthony Wreford, a trustee of the club, to India for a weekend of talks with consortium members and IPL officials. Discussions also included the ongoing partnership with the IPL to promote the MCC Spirit of Cricket campaign in the tournament.

“MCC has a proud history, is respectful of the game’s traditions and always mindful of its role as guardian of the laws and spirit of cricket,” said Bradshaw. “We would not pursue a path that we believed was contrary to the best interests of the sport or to the future health of Test match cricket.

“Undeniably, the game is changing. MCC, as an innovative, independent cricket club, wants to be at the heart of that change. Playing cricket is something that we have quite a bit of experience in – we compete in over 450 matches every year around the world and currently have a men’s team in the UAE and a women’s team in Trinidad & Tobago.

“The concept of MCC involvement in the IPL is something I believe is worthy of thorough investigation, and something that we’ll take to our committee for their deliberation.”

According to well-placed sources, the IPL has suspended the Saurashtra cricketer for this season – as he was bargaining for more salary from various franchisees, without getting a clearance from the Royals for this season. Jadeja can now appeal against this decision.

Sources said that when the Royals signed up Jadeja for the inaugural season, he was an under-19 recruit and was inducted into the team through the ‘draft system’ for which he was paid the stipulated Rs 20 lakh. In the second season, when the franchise got the opportunity to sign Jadeja for two years, he was reluctant to sign on the dotted line and only agreed to play for the Royals for a year.

After his contract with the Shane Warne-led team ended on December 31, 2009, Jadeja started looking for a better bargain. Rules say that he can talk to other teams only if Royals – who have the first right to refusal – agree to let him go.

Sources added that Royals discussed the issue with the IPL commissioner Lalit Modi and it was decided to suspend Jadeja. “We strictly adhere to the Code of Conduct and if any cricketer is violating it then we won’t tolerate it,” a BCCI official said.

Jadeja could not be contacted. Sources said that if Jadeja wishes to appeal, he will have to take an appointment with Modi in this regard. “Then, if the governing council decides to consider his case, he could be pardoned.”

Source: Times of India

“It is confirmed that all the matches will be shifted out from there,” IPL CEO Sundar Raman told TOI on Friday.

Earlier, IPL boss Lalit Modi had thrown enough hints on such a move when he announced that the opening match of the tournament against Kolkata Knight Riders, scheduled to be hosted by defending champions Deccan Chargers, had been shifted to the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.

“We will have the gala dinner and the opening ceremony along with the first match. There will be guests from all over and we can’t take a chance with that,” Modi had said back then.

However, in the ensuing weeks, the IPL was further convinced that the current situation in Hyderabad was not safe for the other scheduled matches too. Out of the Chargers’ seven home matches, only five were scheduled to be played in Hyderabad, while the other two were alloted to Visakhapatnam. Once the Telangana issue cropped up, the opener was shifted to Mumbai.

Now, Navi Mumbai will host the Chargers’ opening game on March 12; Visakhapatnam will host two other matches on March 19 (vs Kings XI, Punjab) and March 21 (vs Delhi Daredevils). The rest of the matches will be allotted to a yet-to-be decided venue outside Andhra Pradesh. TOI has learnt that the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) in Nagpur, which was earlier scheduled to host three home matches for the Mumbai Indians, could host these matches.

Recently, while Chargers were busy playing a practice match in Hyderabad, agitators barged into the playfield and uprooted the stumps, thus disrupting the match. That forced the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) to cordon off the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium in Uppal and host the Duleep Trophy final without spectators for the first three days. These events further bolstered IPL’s decision to shift out.

Recently, the state sports minister K Venkat Reddy had tried to mend fences by writing to ICC president-elect Sharad Pawar saying “the Telangana joint action committee, which is spearheading the agitation, has assured full cooperation for matches to be held in Hyderabad”.

The same advice has been given to the Australian hockey team for the World Cup starting Feb 28.

India’s right-wing Shiv Sena party had threatened to prevent the Australian players from playing in Mumbai and Nagpur, both IPL venues, in retaliation for the attacks on Indians Down Under.

The chief of security for the IPL, Bob Nicholls, was quoted as saying in The Age: ‘The security situation in India is not what we would like it to be, there are concerns, the threat level does remain high.’

‘There are concerns generally outside of the Shiv Sena thing. Shiv Sena is obviously a particular area of concern for the Aussies, but from our perspective, we look at the team as a whole.

‘And what I can say is that the level of protection we are providing for the general threat is greater than if we were implementing security strategy purely for the Shiv Sena threat, therefore we believe the players will be safe.

‘At the moment there doesn’t seem to be any acts of violence happening against Australians in India.

‘The times that we would be most concerned about is when they are out and about on their own, we will be giving them a list of dos and don’ts.

‘It is pretty straightforward, the greater risk is if people are going out on their own rather than in a team environment, and not to go out advertising that they are Aussies, wearing Aussie shirts.

‘The same advice has been given to the Australian hockey team (for the World Cup).’

Security experts have warned of a possible terrorist attack during the IPL and the level of threat has been described as similar to that around the time of the Mumbai terror attack in 2008.

Twenty-one Australian players are listed to play in next month’s IPL, including Shane Watson, Cameron White, David Hussey, David Warner, Shaun Marsh, Ryan Harris, Dirk Nannes and Shaun Tait.

Nicholls’ company, Nicholls Steyn and Associates, is in charge of player security for the tournament. It has previously arranged security for cricket’s World Cup and Champions Trophy – and will have a ”representative” with each franchise.

‘If those representatives are not comfortable with the security arrangements in place at the destination where players are travelling, such as grounds, then they will order the players to remain in the hotels until those security issues are rectified,’ Nicholls said.

‘The plan we put in place for the Champions League in India in October, this plan will be very similar to what we did there. That worked very well, so we’re using very much a similar template.’

‘This (decision to keep out Pakistani players) has nothing to do with Indo-Pak relations in cricket. This is between IPL and us. They have made a mistake, whether purposefully we don’t know. But I strongly feel it was a wrong decision on their part not to consider any of our boys,’ Butt told CNN-IBN in an interview.

IPL franchise owners did not bid for Pakistani players during the auction for the IPL III, which has snowballed into a major spat between the two countries. In the latest move, the PCB has revoked its no objection certificates to players to participate in the IPL. This means that no Pakistani player will be able to play in IPL this year even if any Indian team seek their inclusion at a later stage.

Butt thinks ‘the responsibility is solely with IPL and Lalit Modi’.

‘IPL is giving statements against Pakistani players despite many people in Pakistan and India having asked us to move on. We still don’t know any reason why has this not been entertained yet by IPL.’

The PCB chief also questioned Modi’s ‘motive’ behind the controversy.

‘You must ask Modi about the motive. Why he did this we don’t understand. I don’t think anybody in India or Pakistan understands this. I spoke to Modi in London during the T20 World Cup. He explained the reasons why the boys were not considered in South Africa (last year). I understood and then he assured me all would be playing in next IPL (IPL 3).’

Nadeem Sarwar, the PCB’s media chief, said that in future the board will only decide on the participation of its cricketers in the IPL in consultation with the relevant government authorities.

“Today, Pakistan Cricket Board announces, for clarification purposes, that all NOCs issued to Pakistani players for their participation in IPL-3 stand revoked,” he stated.

“In the future if any player receives an invitation for participation in IPL events, the PCB will decide the matter on a case to case basis after consulting the relevant government authorities,” added Sarwar.

The PCB announcement came just a day after reports emerged that a few Pakistani cricketers might be able to feature in the IPL.

Pakistani cricketers were snubbed at the IPL player auction in Mumbai earlier this month when none of them was picked by the franchisees. It created a wave of anger in Pakistan and triggered a diplomatic row between the two neighbours.

Pakistani politicians and cricketers alike said the outcome was an insult and there were calls to boycott sporting ties with India.

Source: Times of India

Mumbai Indians owner Nita Ambani said, “We are happy with Pollard since we wanted a batting allrounder.”

From 2011 onwards, when the number of teams will be increased from eight to 10, a fresh auction will be held for all cricketers for a three-year term.

Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers were involved in another tie-breaker for ex-ICL player Shane Bond. The bid was finally won by Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders for $750,000(Rs 3.41 crore) but again the tie-breaker amount wasn’t disclosed. Rajasthan Royals bought ex-ICL player from Australia Damien Martyn for $100,000. West Indies fast bowler Kemar Roach was bought by Deccan Chargers for $720,000. Chennai Super Kings won the bid for Sri Lankan Thissara Perera for $50,000. Rajasthan Royals bagged Australian Adam Voges for $50,000.

The sole Indian player in the auction pool Mohd Kaif with a base price of $100,000 was bought over by Kings XI Punjab for $250,000.

England batsman Eoin Morgan was bagged by Bangalore Royal Challengers for $220,000. In the first round just over $3 million was spent by the IPL franchises.

Pakistan’s Sohail Tanveer of Rajasthan Royals found no takers, Kamran Akmal and Imran Nazir went unsold. Australian Brad Haddin and England’s Graeme Swann were unsold in round-1. Australian Phil Hughes found no takers. West Indies players Wavell Hinds, Ramnaesh Sarwan, Darren Ganga were unsold. Sri Lankan Upul Tharanga and Nuwan Kulasekara were unable to find a bidder. England’s Jonathon Trott was unsold too. Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan was also ignored at the auction.

Under-19 players were not included in the auction but they were under base price of Rs 8 lakh. Bangalore picked Indian Under-19 captain Ashok Meenaria. Deccan Charges took Harmeet Singh and Mumbai Indians got Harsha Patel.

List of Players Auctioned for the IPL Third Edition

• Mumbai, Jan 19 (IANS) The list of players sold in the Indian Premier League auction here Tuesday.
• Kieron Pollard (West Indies) was bought by Mumbai Indians for $750,000 (base price, $200,000).
• Wayne Parnell (South Africa) was bought by Delhi Daredevils for $610,000 (base price, $200,000).
• Shane Bond (New Zealand) was bought by Kolkata Knight Riders for $750,000 (base price, $100,000).
• Kemar Roach (West Indies) was bought by Deccan Chargers for $720,000 (base price, $100,00).
• Eoin Morgan (England) was bought by Royal Challengers Bangalore for $220,000 (base price, $200,00).
• Mohammad Kaif (India) was bought by Kings XI Punjab for $250,000 (base price $100,000)
• Damien Martyn (Australia) was bought by Rajasthan Royals for the base price $100,000.
• Thissara Perera (Sri Lanka) was bought by Chennai Super Kings for the base price$50,000.
• Justin Kemp (South Africa) bought by Chennai Super Kings for the base price $100,000.
• Adam Voges (Australia) bought by Rajasthan Royals for the base price $50,000.
• Yusuf Abdulla (South Africa) bought by Kings XI Punjab for the base price $20,000.

Source: The Times Of India and Yahoo News