'Pietersen has already agreed to be part of IPL' - Modi

Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, has said that only a no-objection certificate from the England board stands in the way of Kevin Pietersen participating in the Twenty20 tournament next season.

"I am very keen for Kevin to take part in the IPL," Modi said in an exclusive interview to Cricinfo.TV. "He has already agreed to be part of it, we just need an NOC from the ECB."

The England board is believed to have made its players available for 14 days of the IPL as part of a deal in which 20 IPL players will be released for the ECB's proposed Twenty20 league.

"The ECB have agreed in principle to release the players for the next season. It has, of course, strings attached," he said. "We are evaluating those strings, whether we can agree to it or not. The good news is at least the ECB has moved from the position of not allowing their players in the IPL."

Modi also said that a trading window was introduced to provide teams "another opportunity" to a hire players. "There may be times when teams have too many players or are in need of players," he said. "We need to give an opportunity to those teams to keep the players as a currency, so that they can get a benefit out of that by trading."

Several major sporting leagues, including the National Football League (American football) and the English Premier League (football), are mulling over the concept of staging matches abroad and Modi said that he was keen on seeing countries other than India hosting IPL games. "We have a lot of international players who have a great appeal in many countries, so for us to take our league abroad would be far easier than for the NFL which has mainly American players."