Hours before the players' auction for the fifth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) was due to begin, the Sahara India group announced on Saturday that it was withdrawing from its sponsorship of Indian cricket as well as its ownership of the Pune Warriors IPL franchise.
File photo of Sahara India chairman Subrata Roy
Hours before the players' auction for the fifth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) was due to begin, the Sahara India group announced today that it was withdrawing from its sponsorship of Indian cricket as well as its ownership of the Pune Warriors IPL franchise.
The reason for the parting was major differences, in general, with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which Sahara said did not believe in "genuine give and take", and, in particular, over a replacement for Yuvraj Singh, who is undergoing treatment for critical illness overseas.
The BCCI, however, went ahead with the auctions of the players.
Sahara said in a statement that, on the basis of the fact that it had only one India marquee player, it had requested the BCCI that it should be allowed add the price of Yuvraj Singh to its purse during today's auction because it had later taken Saurav Ganguly at $ 0.4 million.
"Again, we have been denied on the basis of the rule book. Yet again, a case of being denied natural justice. We think this peculiar situation of Yuvraj Singh is silent in the rule book because it probably talks only about players who are temporarily injured.
File photo of Yuvraj Singh EPA /UNI PHOTO
"Incidentally, once during the Champion’s League tournament, one of the Indian IPL teams had a lot of injured players so they were rightly, out of natural justice, allowed to break the rules and take one extra foreign player. We appreciated this natural justice," the statement said, referring to the BCCI decision last year to allow the Mumbai Indians to field an extra foreign player because several of its players were down with injuries.
"Yuvraj Singh, who is truly like one of our family members, is, quite unfortunately, passing through a bad phase health wise, undergoing treatment for critical illness, overseas. Out of enthusiasm, he may like to come out on the ground after a few months. But any well-wisher who truly loves him, would never desire that he be allowed to play for the oncoming months. Our duty is to take care of him, so Sahara has decided to pay him his full fee this year with condition as a Guardian that his priority should be health care and he should not play till he has fully recovered," the statement said.
Tracing its long association with Indian cricket, Sahara said the relationship was "primarily emotional".
"...and all along, the journey was indeed, a privileged one for the entire Sahara India Pariwar. In 2001, cricket was not as rich but had become a religion in our country. We had requested the then BCCI President Jagmohan Dalmia to go for an open auction, for the Indian team’s sponsorship inviting only interested Indian corporates, since it was not right that it should go to some MNC. But for obvious, unavoidable reasons, BCCI did not accept that.
"After 3 months, one fine morning, our Chairman was told that the sponsorship had gone to an MNC. Immediately, our Chairman called Dalmiaji and expressed his desire to take up the sponsorship. He responded quite positively and requested for a 10% increase in the price, which our Chairman immediately accepted.
"Now after an 11-year journey as sponsors, we can say with surety that cricket has become very rich. Many rich people are there to support cricket with a strong will to do so. So, with absolute peace of mind we can exit from cricket under BCCI and are now exiting with a heavy heart. It was an emotional decision for us to start this sponsorship but our emotions were never appreciated and many genuine situations, were not given due consideration at all.
"Our first entry into IPL was thwarted in 2008 when we were disqualified, owing to a small technicality on the whims and fancies of BCCI. Yet our bid was not opened. Last year, Sahara entered the IPL on the basis of information in the media and everywhere else that 94 matches will be played among 10 teams. The bid price was accordingly calculated, but only 74 matches were played. We are still pursuing continuously with the BCCI to refund the extra bid money proportionately. It has been denied on the basis of strict rules.
"In the interest of the tournament, we repeatedly tried our best to pursue the BCCI for open auction of all players so that we achieve level playing field and all teams are equally balanced from the quality players’ point of view. Again, as per BCCI’s strict rules it was denied and again, we were deprived of natural justice. 12 of the best players were retained by the existing teams then.
"The two new teams then requested for allowing us at least one extra foreign player but that too was denied, quoting rules.
"Once during a World Cup tournament, Sahara’s name was not allowed because there was a clash of our airline with a South African airline. In two major tournaments, the team had to play without the ‘SAHARA’ logo. It was ICC’s decision so we could realize that it was for no fault of BCCI and we also did not want the players to suffer. As per the rules, we were not supposed to pay sponsorship money for those matches but we still paid the players' share of the amount in entirety. Sadly, we never found BCCI believing in genuine give and take," the statement said.
The statement said Sahara felt that such "one-sided emotional relationship" could not be dragged any further.
File photo of the Indian cricket team celebrating the ICC World Cup 2011 after beating Sri Lanka in the final at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on April 2, 2011. EPA/UNI PHOTO
"We are withdrawing from all cricket under BCCI. However, we don’t want to give any problem to the BCCI and we also feel that the players should not suffer. BCCI will definitely take 2-4 months to get a new sponsor and we will continue paying the sponsorship money till then. All other IPL team players, coaches and other such associates will definitely get their due this year, in case they do not get a chance to play," it said.
"For this, our humble request once again to the BCCI is that through the right process and with strict rules/regulations, they should pass on our team to some other interested party immediately. We expect at least this much of our humble request will kindly be accepted after 12 years of our productive relations hip with the BCCI," the statement said.
The Group said it had decided that the money allocated by it for cricket would now be diverted to social work.
"We are declaring to put immediately Rs. 500 crore in Sahara Welfare Foundation, which will be run with the association of eminent persons of our country. For the programme as mentioned below, Sahara declares to put around Rs. 500 crore more in the next 1-2 years as per the need of all the programmes.
"We are working on various programmes including financial implications etc since we have taken this decision after continuous persuasion with the BCCI failed, meaning on the 2nd of February, 2012. But we waited upto the auction day ie today, 4th of February that our request to BCCI would be accepted. But again, there was no natural justice," it said.
The statement said Sahara would develop 20 rural/semi-urban Sports Protional Centres, including cricket centres. Each such centre will have 7 to 10 acres of land, with hostels having 50-100 rooms. The centres will cater to different disciplines, including hockey, soccer, tennis, golf, wrestling, boxing and so on.
It said one international standard sports academy would be developed in India, where the best students from the centres would come.
The company also said it would set up a support fund for retired sportspersons who are facing financial difficulties.
It said it would consider increasing its sponsorship amount for other disciplines and also support various other social programmes.
NNN
