Mumbai: The President Sri Ganganagar District Cricket Association (Rajasthan), Mehmood Abdi, has said that termination of the Pune Warriors team from the Indian Premier League (IPL) has vindicated his stand in his complaint before the Marine Drive Police Station that BCCI chief N. Srinivasan colluded with SONY to shrink the IPL format from ten teams to eight teams.
Mehmood Abdi said that N.Srinivasan has terminated the Sahara franchise to ensure that the number of teams in the IPL remain at eight. That would help keep the number of matches per season down to only 59 matches, as against 94 originally envisaged per season with 10 teams.
Sony had always opposed the increase in number of teams from 8 to 10, as it would end up significantly increasing the pay out to BCCI by SONY, as per the media rights agreement dated 25. 3. 2009. Especially, since the amounts payable by SONY was to increase pro-rata with number of matches.
Even with 10 teams to favour SONY Srinivasan had only increased the number of matches to 76 as against 94. This decreased the revenue of which 80 % was to go to franchisees including Sahara.
Sahara had made a bid of US $ 375 million basis the 94 match projection given by BCCI. However, N.Srinivasan changed the format to favour SONY which resulted in Sahara and other franchisees suffering undue losses and eventual termination. A fact pointed out by Mr. Abdi in his complaint, which has now proved to be true. The termination of Sahara therefore is culmination of N Srinivasan’s collusive understanding with SONY.
With Sahara ‘s termination, the matches would further decrease from 76 to 59 putting BCCI in an additional loss of approximately Rs. 1000 Crores aggregating the total losses to BCCI in the region of Rs. 3400 Crores.
N Srinivasan has thus, created circumstances for the exit of Sahara now and earlier the Kochi franchise. He has further completely destroyed the original format of IPL.
Mehmood Abdi further urged the Mumbai Police to take into account these developments while probing his complaint filed with Marine drive police station.
