Indian news round-up

Delhi court restraints Prasad Bharti on telecast issue: The Delhi High Court has restrained Prasar Bharti from inserting any commercial logo or scrollers during the telecast of matches by Doordarshan under the agreement with the BCCI. The interim stay ordered by Justice JD Kapoor based on the petition filed by Buddha Films Ltd. (BFL), which was given further contract with Prasar Bharti for the marketing rights.

BFL alleged that the Prasar Bharti had violated the terms of the agreement with it regarding the marketing rights as it started displaying scrollers of "www.dd.now.com" during the telecast of the recent India-Zimbabwe matches. The court also informed that since BFL had been given a minimum guarantee of Rs 450 crore for marketing of the matches, superimposition of commercials by Prasar Bharti would cause it irreparable loss.

In the petition, BFL also had alleged that while the contract was for the free-to-air telecast of the matches' signals by DD, Prasar Bharti made the sports channel a pay channel and many of advertisers, who had booked the slots, started withdrawing their bookings.

Indian captain Sourav Ganguly on Thursday said that the one match ban slapped on him for showing dissent and intimidating the umpire was an incident that was mere part of the game while terming it unfortunate.

Speaking to Press Trust of India in Rajkot, Ganguly said "It was a part of the game. Such things happen on the spur of the moment and are not intentional."

The ICC match referee, Barry Jarman had slapped the ban on the Indian captain after he intimidated the umpire on leg before decisions against Mluleki Nkala at Kanpur. Ganguly has been handed down a twomatch suspended suspension till June 1 for trying to bring the game into disrepute.

Zimbabwe skipper Heath Streak on Thursday while speaking to reporters in Mumbai termed the just concluded Indian tour as enjoyable but added "we have to work hard in future to face competition."

Quoting Heath Streak, Press Trust of India said "We could have won the one-day series but we lacked in our efforts. I must say that the Indians played well and they deserved the win." Speaking of the Tests, he said "it was the rich Indian experience which cost us dear. Javagal Srinath bowled well and the Indian top order batted extraordinarily."

On India's performance in the series, Streak said "the team is playing good cricket and I hope they will continue in the same fashion in the coming home series against Australia."