Venues for Champions Trophy still undecided

The impasse over the venues for this year's Champions Trophy continued with the Indian board still to sort out contentious issues with the ICC. The emergency meeting of the BCCI's Working Committee, called in New Delhi to decide on the venues for the tournament, failed to arrive at a decision.

The controversy over misappropriation of funds relating to TV rights for the 1996 World Cup by the previous regime dominated the agenda instead.

But, N Srinivasan, the BCCI treasurer, said the board was hopeful of sorting out the issue soon. "The BCCI is close to finalising issues with ICC. The president has been authorised to finalise the venues. There are additional costs and other matters related to it (which need to be sorted out). We are hopeful that the matters would get resolved shortly," he told reporters.

India, who have threatened to pull out of the Champions Trophy from 2008 onwards, are on a collision course with the ICC over this year's event to be held in October. The main point of contention relates to advertising revenue. Under a multi-million dollar agreement between ICC and Global Cricket Corporation, all ICC-owned events have to be contested at `clean' venues where no unofficial sponsorship can be permitted. However, since two of the three earlier proposed venues - Mumbai and Delhi - have their own agreements with various corporates, other venues are being assessed to host the event.

Meanwhile, the Working Committee approved the awarding of television rights to Nimbus for a four-year period. Nimbus had bid an amount of USD 612.18 million (approx Rs 2,755 crore) to acquire the rights for a period from March 1, 2006 to March 31, 2010, ahead of nine top media houses.

The board also announced that India and Pakistan would play two one-day games at Abu Dhabi on April 18 and 19 to mobilise aid for last year's earthquake victims. Srinivasan said that 75% of the proceeds from the first match would go to Pakistan and 25% to Kashmir. The proceeds from the second game would be shared between the two boards.

The board also decided to increase the pension amount - to Rs 25,000 per month from the current Rs 10,000 per month - to cricketers who played for the country before December 1975 and hike the remuneration of umpires for both international and domestic matches.