After six years of lukewarm response from fans, the governing council of the Champions league Twenty20 comprising the representatives of the BCCI, CA and CSA on Wednesday unanimously decided to discontinue the tournament.
The annual tournament, launched in 2009 and featuring the world’s leading domestic T20 teams, was jointly run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Cricket Australia (CA), and Cricket South Africa (CSA), and was due to be staged in September and October.
The “discontinuation of the league was the most appropriate decision due to the tournament’s limited public following,” the BCCI said in a statement on Wednesday.
The event “provided added context to a number of domestic Twenty20 competitions around the world such as the IPl in India, Big Bash league in Australia, and South Africa’s Ram Slam T20,” BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur said. “Unfortunately, off the field, Champions league T20 wasn’t sustaining the interest of the fans as we had hoped.”
The cancellation was announced a day after the Supreme Court-appointed RM lodha committee issued two-year bans for two IPl franchises — Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals — and life bans for two officials in the wake of a corruption scandal triggered by a spot-fixing investigation in 2013. There’s uncertainty over the immediate future of former champions CSK and RR, which have some of the world’s highest-profile players under contract.
The decision to scrap ClT20 will also effectively mean that the BCCI and other stakeholders will find it difficult to organise a mini-IPl, which was being planned to fill the only vacant slot available in September. In all likelihood, the plans for a replacement tournament would be shelved for now.
The IPl has been a major financial success, sparking a rush of T20 tournaments around the world. The International Cricket Council (ICC) also has a world championship in the T20 format for national teams.
Thakur said the decision to scrap the ClT20 was made after consultation with commercial partners.
The Sydney Sixers, which qualified for the Cl T20 as runner-up in the Big Bash, said the cancellation was a setback. “For the players, the opportunity to perform on the world stage has been a huge motivation for making the BBl final,” Sydney Sixers general manager Dominic Remond said.
“As a club, we have built our roster around being very competitive at this level, contracting players whose service we miss during the BBl, with the intention of having a world-class team at the Champion’s league. We will now have to review our strategy and focus on winning (the Australian title).”
Cricket Australia general manager of operations Mike McKenna foreshadowed a possible return of the event.
“We are committed to exploring new opportunities to deliver on the original objective of the Champions league,” McKenna said. “There is an established period of time to stage an event of this nature in September and October each year, and it is about identifying a model that works for the long-term.”
With inputs from agencies