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HC notices to BCCI, RBI

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI JAN. 17. The commercial conflicts involving the International Cricket Council (ICC), the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Indian cricket players bedevilling the World Cup matches to be held in South Africa and Zimbabwe from February 8 today reached the Delhi High Court.

Six prominent citizens — N.K.P. Salve, former Union Minister, Siddharth Shankar Ray, former West Bengal Chief Minister, Kapil Dev, former cricket captain, Madan Lal, former medium pace bowler, Ram Babu Gupta, a former test umpire, and Shyam Kumar Bansal, a former ICC umpire — through a joint public interest litigation petition, urged the court to direct the Union Government not to release foreign exchange to the Indian sponsors of the World Cup if the Indian players were debarred from participating in the event.

However, the petitioners have not given up the hope of resolving the dispute amicably because the PIL petition also sought a direction to the Government to bring the parties to the dispute to the negotiating table to settle the matter. The petitioners said the dispute had arisen out of the implementation of the Participating Nations Agreement and the Player Terms, which debar members of a participating team from entering into individual commercial contracts with the competing sponsor companies of the World Cup.

Adhering to the Player Terms would mean for the Indian players withdrawing from the individual commercial contracts which they are not ready do as it would hurt their earnings, the petitioners said. Taking note of the petition, a Division Bench comprising Justice Devinder Gupta and Justice B.D. Ahmed issued notices, returnable on January 21, to the ICC, the BCCI, the Reserve Bank of India and others.

The players demanded that their existing contract be not breached and that the ICC and its commercial subsidiary, International Cricket Council (Development), had no right, liberty and authority to sell, transfer and give away their individual rights to other third parties which were competing sponsors, the petition said.

The petition further said that the players had agreed and accepted that once they were selected to be part of the playing squad, they would not enter into, renew or add any contract with the sponsors who was or were competing sponsors of the ICC events between 2000 and 2007.

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