IPL 2024 factoids: Remember Subhash Chandra's Indian Cricket League? Here what happened...

Subhash Chandra decided to buy the cricketers. Unlike the Indian Premier League, he owned the teams as well. The matches would be telecast live on his own Zee Sports. (Photo credit: Subhash Chandra Foundation via Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

Eleven days after India were knocked out of the 2007 ODI World Cup, Subhash Chandra of Zee launched a T20 tournament with a million-dollar prize money. His Indian Cricket League (ICL) was going to be a private league that would run parallel to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) tournaments.

Back when cricket did not pay as much, Indian players used to participate in privately organised masala matches for money. What Subhash Chandra launched was of epic proportions, far beyond any private cricket known in India till then, that too in a format India had not yet woken up to.

He was trying to settle a score with the BCCI, who had denied him broadcasting rights. So, like Kerry Packer three decades before him, he decided to buy the cricketers. Unlike the Indian Premier League, he owned the teams as well. The matches would be telecast live on his own Zee Sports.

There would be six teams to begin with, but there were promises of expanding to 16 within three years. Each ICL team would have its own state-of-the-art training facilities, psychologists, mentors, physios, and media managers. There would be an ombudsman for the cricketers, and an executive board and a rules committee.

The ICL would be played in T20 format, but would expand to One-Day Internationals (ODIs) – in 2007, still the most popular format.

Chandra also claimed that the BCCI had been unable to create a “reserve pipeline of players”. He assured that Indian cricket would have an “ideal pool with killing instinct”. He focused on uncapped cricketers. Each of the six squads had two Indian internationals, four overseas players, and eight domestic players. Many of the latter group were unlikely to play for India. The ICL scouts travelled across India to look for young talent.

By launching the ICL, Subhash Chandra became the first man to seriously challenge the BCCI’s monopoly on Indian cricket.

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