BCCI calls emergency IPL meeting

The BCCI has called an emergency meeting of the IPL's governing council in Mumbai on Sunday, when it is likely to discuss the show-cause notices it had sent to three IPL franchises - Kings XI Punjab, Rajasthan Royals and Kochi - following the board's annual general meeting last month for various alleged irregularities committed by the three.

The letter from N Srinivasan, the Indian board's secretary, to the eight governing council members did not specify an agenda but sources have indicated that the board is eager to act on the notices, which franchises have ten days to respond to.

A top board official with knowledge of the development told ESPNcricinfo that the letter to the governing council - sent on Friday - did not mention "scrapping" any of the three franchises. "Primarily it is a meeting about the new members getting acquainted with the functioning of the governing council," he said. "Obviously there will be a decision taken on the issues relating to these three teams. We don't even know what those issues are at the moment. Scrapping is not mentioned on the agenda."

Board president Shashank Manohar criticised the three franchises at his press conference the AGM and was especially hard on Kochi. It was difficult, he said, to communicate with Kochi as the franchise owners had split into two factions after winning the bid to become the tenth IPL franchise at the auction in March.

Rendezvous Sports World, a consortium of five companies, bagged the team for US$333.33 million but almost immediately ran into trouble over the composition of its ownership, after the IPL found out that there were a few "secret partners" in the consortium. A new agreement was then signed by both parties but a fresh controversy broke out when Lalit Modi, then the IPL chairman, made the ownership details public on Twitter.

Nearly six months after the auction Kochi has still failed to resolve its various internal disputes, which revolve around the distribution of shares in the consortium. The investors are unhappy with the promoters, who do not want to give up the rights to lead the franchise. Though both groups have been engaged in talks through this week in Mumbai, there has been no resolution yet.

"The BCCI is concerned that the unresolved dispute between the consortium members would prove to be extremely damaging to the IPL if allowed to continue any further," the board said in the show-case notice addressed to Rendezvous Sports World.

Immediately after the AGM, Manohar had warned that the board would be willing to scrap the franchise if it did not get its act together. "We might play with nine teams or eight teams, we don't know," he said at the time.

The meeting will be the first for the reconstituted governing council, which had its membership reduced from 14 to eight, and its tenure and powers cut. Chirayu Amin was appointed the chairman of the governing council, which comprises five other members - Arun Jaitley, Ranjib Biswal, Anurag Thakur, Ajay Shirke and Rajiv Shukla - and two former cricketers, Ravi Shastri and Mohinder Amarnath, as honorary members.