ICL will unlock hidden value in cricket
Nandan Kamath, the director of an advisory firm for sports persons, believes that the competition from the ICL will be good for Indian cricket
Sriram Veera
25-Feb-2013
Nandan Kamath, the director of an advisory firm for sports persons, believes that the competition from the ICL will be good for Indian cricket. D Murali interviews him in the Hindu.
Stating that the BCCI was a completely independent “society” registered under the Societies Registration Act, the majority judgment of the Supreme Court held the organisation not to be “state” under Article 12 of the Indian Constitution. The flipside of this decision is that the BCCI’s practices do not enjoy the immunity from anti-monopoly, competition and restrictive trade practices laws that all state functionaries do. As a result, the BCCI’s actions would be subject to the general competition laws of the land.
Which means the recent reactions of BCCI can be questioned?
That’s right. The player and service provider bans, discriminatory denial of access to stadia and revocation of benefits could be challenged in a court of law by aggrieved parties based on legal principles such as unreasonable restraint of trade, unfair competition and the “essential facilities” doctrine.
The bosses at the ICL meanwhile have a rather unusual problem in their hands. A Bangalore-based entrepreneur seems to have stolen their thunder with a website to rival their own and are looking at all possibilities, including the legal route, to vacate him. Read the piece in the Indian Express.
What’s bothering ICL officials now is not just the fact that it’s Ramesh’s site that first pops up when you type and search Indian Cricket League on Google — apparently, many ICL fans, including some prospective cricketers, have already lost their way on the wrong site, sending queries to the wrong address.
Sriram Veera is a former staff writer at ESPNcricinfo