79 players granted BCCI amnesty after ICL exodus

Mumbai:

The BCCI today granted amnesty to 79 current and 11 former players after they snapped ties with the unauthorised Indian Cricket League (ICL), clearing the decks for their return to mainstream fold.

Announcing the major ICL exodus, the BCCI said in a statement that altogether 101 players and others availed the cricket board's time-bound amnesty offer and deserted the rebel league bankrolled by the Essel Group.

By snapping ties with ICL, the cricketers immediately became eligible for domestic cricket and would also be considered for international matches once they complete their one year cooling off period, the BCCI said.

"The BCCI, after scrutinising their requests, has written to the concerned state associations that these players are eligible to play in the domestic tournaments for this year", Board secretary N Srinivasan said.

Among the 101 players and others who have deserted ICL were former internationals Rohan Gavaskar, Deep Dasgupta (Bengal), Dinesh Mongia, Reetinder Sodhi (Punjab) and Hemang Badani (Tamil Nadu).

The 11 former cricketers who have quit the ICL are ex-Test skipper Ajit Wadekar, spin legend Erapalli Prasanna and 1983 World Cup-winning Indian squad members Sandeep Patil, Madan Lal and Balwinder Singh Sandhu.

Most of them were tied up with the ICL as coaches.

Significantly, India's only World Cup-winning skipper Kapil Dev, who is the chairman of the ICL's Executive Board, has not severed his relations with the league along with former Test stumper and ex-Chief Selector Kiran More.

The BCCI secretary said that guidelines with respect to participation in Indian Premier League will be intimated in due course.

The Indian Board has already decided that such persons will have to serve a one-year cooling off period before becoming eligible to play international cricket for the country.

Other ex-Test cricketers who rejoined the BCCI fold include Sandeep Patil, Madan Lal, Karsan Ghavri, Balwinder Sandhu, Ashok Malhotra, Pranab Roy, Bharat Reddy, Rajesh Chauhan and Atul Wassan, Srinivasan informed.

Eleven cricketers of the Punjab Cricket Association, including ODI discard Dinesh Mongia, have returned to its fold while 13 and eight players have returned to the Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad cricket associations respectively.

Meanwhile, though the ICL has been virtually emptied out of its Indian players, the rebel league put up a brave front and said that the league is not shutting down and will recruit new talent as and when it's needed.

"We still have 40-50 players, out of the original 140-odd, on our roster and as and when the need arises we would recruit fresh talent. The League is on. We are not closing down. The next season is in October-November and it's still early days", Roland Landers, Corporate Communications Head of Essel Group, said.

Landers said that in all there were around 85 Indian players in their roster till the second season, out of which 77 have left their fold now.

"We had already left out two of them", he pointed out, one of them being Mongia who had been suspended in October last for allegedly under-performing along with former New Zealand all rounder Chris Cairns.

List of amnesty beneficiaries:

Current players:
Rajiv Kumar (Jharkhand), Kiran Powar, Rakesh Patel (Baroda), Shiv Sagar Singh, Abhiskek Jhunjhunwala, Subhomoy Das, Sayed Akhlakh Ahamad, Rohan Gavaskar, Subhjit Paul, Deep Dasgupta (Bengal), Robin Morris, Nikhil Mandale (Mumbai), Shreyas Khanolkar, Tejinder Pal Singh, P Vivek, J P Yadav, Baburao Yadav, Avinash Yadav (all Railways); Suyesh Burkul, Dheeraj Jadhav, Raviraj Patil, Pushkaraj Joshi, Anupam Sanklecha, Ranjeet Khirid (Maharashtra), Abhinav Bali, Kunal Lal (Delhi), Abid Nabi, Dhruv Mahajan (Jammu and Kashmir), T Sudhindra, Mohnish Mishra, Abbas Ali, Sachin Dholpure, Shridhar Iyer, Abhishek Tamrakar, Bhima Rao (Madhya Pradesh); Syed Zakaria Zuffri, Parviz Aziz, Abu Nechim Ahmed, Sujay Tarafder, Pritam Das (Assam), Dinesh Mongia, Reetinder Sodhi, Karanveer Singh, Harpreet Singh, Sumit Kalia, Love Ablish, Rajesh Sharma, Sarabjeet Singh, Ishan Malhotra, Bipul Sharma, Amit Uniyal (Punjab), Stuart Binny (Karnataka), Abdul Azeem Khan, Alfred Absolom, Ibrahim Khaleel, Indra Shekar Reddy, P S Niranjan, Anirudh Singh, Shashank Nag, Ambati Rayudu (Hyderabad); Syed Shahbuddin (Andhra), Hemang Badani, V Devendran, G Vignesh, Syed Mohammed, R Jesuraj, S Sriram, R Sathish, K Martin Sanjeev, T Kumaran, S Vasanth Saravanan, J Hariesh, D Tamilkumaran, C Hemant Kumar (Tamil Nadu), Gaurav Gupta (Haryana), Avinash Yadav, Shalabh Srivastava, Ali Murtaza, Ali Hamid Zaidi (Uttar Pradesh).

Coaches and Mentors:
Sandeep Patil, E A S Prasanna, Madan Lal, Rajesh Kamath, Karsan Ghavri, Pranab Roy, Ashok Malhotra, Rajesh Chauhan, Balwinder Sandhu, Bharath Reddy, Ajit Wadekar.

Others:
Kiran Padhiyar (Video Analyst), K Martin Sanjeev, A T Rajamani Prabhu, Dr Dinesh Vaghela (Umpire), Atul Wassan, A Burrows (Umpire), Suhas Pawar (Trainer), Rajesh Mundhva (Umpire), Chezhian (Umpire), V Satish (Umpire) and S Shyam Sundar.