On a day when IPl 6 was exploding with the arrest of Dara Singh’s son Vindoo Singh Randhawa for alleged bookie-player connections, the now-off-now-on financial dispute between Pune Warriors India franchisee Sahara India and the BCCI dealt another big blow to the domestic league with Sahara announcing its decision to pull out of the IPl.
The decision came after the BCCI encashed the bank guarantee after a cash-strapped Sahara failed to pay its franchisee fee for this year. This is the second time that Sahara has pulled out of the IPl, the last time being in 2012 when the same issue had cropped up but BCCI damage control managers managed to “persuade” the PWI franchisee to stay on. However, Sahara's repeated requests to the BCCI to tone down the fee went unheard.
According to a Sahara statement, this development will not affect its sponsorship of the Indian team which ends in December 2013. However, the group will not be renewing its sponsorship after that.
“There is a very strong urge in us to withdraw from the Indian cricket team sponsorship from today. But, the interest of the players will suffer …. So we have given time to BCCI to get the new sponsorship in place from January 2014, as we will continue the national team's sponsorship only up to December 2013,” the statement said.The Sahara had entered the IPl in 2010 on a `1,700 crore bid on a revenue calculation on 94 matches and has been paying the annual fee of `170.20 crore without fail.
“It was tricky on part of the BCCI to put the number at 94 matches for getting a bigger amount. We got only 64 matches. We requested the BCCI to reduce the bid price proportionately. Nothing was heard. We waited with confidence ... continuously requested the BCCI for arbitration from June 2011 onwards. But we could not penetrate BCCI's deaf ears and we announced our withdrawal in February 2012,” it added.
Since then, according to Sahara, the BCCI had consistently ignored requests for an arbitrator to work out the reduction of the fee. Sahara's proposal for a former chief justice of India as an arbitrator, too, was rejected by the BCCI.
“Our last match was on May 19. On May 20, the BCCI representative was there in the bank to revoke the bank guarantee. We still tried to contact them for an amicable settlement, but could not get anybody on phone in time…. Now we would not keep the IPl franchisee even if the entire franchisee fee is waived. It is a firm and final decision of Sahara to withdraw from IPl. We request the BCCI to not approach us this time for any discussion,” the statement concluded.
There was no word from the BCCI on this issue except IPl chairman Rajeev Shukla expressed regret over the incident.