The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : BCCI meeting on Feb. 21

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Friday, Feb 17, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

BCCI meeting on Feb. 21

Mumbai: An emergent meeting of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to discuss issues related to venues of the ICC Champions Trophy tournament later this year will be held here on February 21.

This was stated by the BCCI executive secretary in charge, Prof. Ratnakar Shetty.

The tournament has run into early problems with Mumbai and Delhi, two of the three selected venues, having prior agreements with various corporate houses. The host nation agreement signed by BCCI with the International Cricket Council specifies that the centres should be free of any ad signages.

Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium and Delhi's Ferozeshah Kotla ground have long-term contracts with ITC and Tata respectively.

Jaipur, Mumbai (Brabourne), Hyderabad and Bangalore have emerged as alternate venues that were inspected by a team of officials from the ICC and Global Cricket Corporation (GCC), the rights holders of all ICC events till 2007, earlier this month. The GCC is supposed to have submitted its report to the ICC.

Unease

However, increasing the number of venues beyond three has itself created an unease between the BCCI and the game's world governing body.

The Indian Board has also expressed displeasure over the increase in number of matches, a result of adding more teams to and changing the format of what was originally was a knockout tournament.

But the initiative for such a move had come from India and was supported by Australia before being agreed to by all the Boards at a meeting of the ICC in June, 2005.

While India wants to distribute the 21 matches, which includes the qualifying rounds, to as many centres as possible, ICC has opposed it because its agreement with the GCC restricts the event to be held in only three centres.

The GCC is understood to have demanded a million-dollar for each venue added to cover the increase in its production costs.

Significantly, the ICC announced on Wednesday that the Champions Trophy from 2008 onwards would be restricted to eight top ranked teams. — PTI

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