Mumbai, Oct 25:
All the players who were contracted with the Deccan Chargers, whose IPL contract has been terminated by the Cricket Board, will be available for picking by Sun TV Network which today won the Hyderabad franchise for Rs 85.05 crore per year, said BCCI president N Srinivasan.
“All the players of Deccan Chargers are available to the new franchise. I think they have signed agreements and the new franchise will have time till October 31st to decide who they want to retain, but all the Deccan Chargers players are now with Sun Group,” Srinivasan told reporters after the opening of the bids by the IPL Governing Council here.
“The franchise now has a choice to retain whoever they want and decide by October 31st. As far as the player their interest is completely protected and they have also been paid for the last year,” the Board chief said.
Srinivasan also said that the value that the Board got from the new owners was twice of what Deccan Chargers paid in 2008.
“If you see, this is twice the value of Deccan Chargers (who had bid for Rs 428 crore). If you take into account the sharing of central rights compared to the earlier expansion of franchise, you will find that this bid represents a higher value; it is a very good value.
“That is because the original eight franchises have ten-year contracts; so five years is left. So after ten years the revenue sharing is that you don’t pay a franchise fee but you pay 20 percent of your income. So that is consistent for all of them.
“More importantly it is a very credible franchise owner who is in the media so they will add a lot of value to the league so that is something to be very happy about,” he said.
“It is not a question of how many bids came in but the fact is that we got a good bid,” added Srinivasan.
There was only one other bidder, PVP Ventures whose bid amount was Rs 69.03 crore. Two other interested parties bought the Invitation to Tender, priced at Rs 5 lakh by the Board and non-refundable, but did not bid, according to sources. (PTI)