Indian Cricket League

On 3 April 2007, Zee Telefilms (part of Subhash Chandra promoted Essel Group) announced that it would be partner with infrastructure major IL&FS to create a new ambitious cricket league, Indian Cricket League (ICL). This league will have a prize money of $ 1 million for the winner. ICL was set up with a Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) corpus, and would initially comprise six teams to be expanded to 16 in three years. This will make ICL the richest professional league in the country with
an annual prize of $1 million (Rs. 4.4 crore). ICL has already signed a number of major players but is yet to reveal their names. On July 24th, some great international names have been cropped up; viz. Brian Lara. The ICL has confirmed that Brian Lara has signed up and will be joining the league. Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath are also likely to join the league by the end of July 2007. It is also expected that Stephen Fleming would also join ICL. Former Pakistan skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq also
expressed his desire to join the league. However, the Pakistan Cricket Board warned its players to stay away from the league. Imran Farhat though chose to opt out of his Pakistan Central contract to sign with the Indian Cricket League. Former captain of the Pakistan Cricket Team Javed Miandad said he is not able to understand why PCB is not allowing its players to play in the league and even threatened players with a lifetime ban.