The ‘rebel’ cricket league may have been badly debilitated after the respective boards have decided to take back players who wished to return to domestic and national duty.
The Indian Cricket League (ICL) was a pioneering venture in terms of taking the club concept of Twenty20 further (something that Lalit Modi now heavily harps on) in 2007 only to have the monopolistic BCCI come up with their own rich version in the form of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The BCCI tried everything in its power to get the ICL snubbed, including derecognizing all its Indian players but also, ensuring other boards followed suit as the ICC wilted under the economic pressure of the BCCI.
All desperate attempts to get the Subash Chandra and Zee led enterprise recognized by the ICC were thwarted to the extent that the ICL have actually decided to take the ICC to court. However, it appears that the ICL has received perhaps a crippling blow now.
While the ICL announced that they were not cash strapped and that that was not the reason for the ICL not hosting its March April tournament, the time period certainly allowed the players who chose to affiliate with them to ponder over their future prospects.
Jumping on the opportunity to cash in on a situation where the players were beginning to doubt their earlier judgement, the BCCI announced amnesty to the players with a cooling off period to allow them to become eligible to play for the country again. It meant that seventy-nine Indian players took the bait and the ICL has been left with a hole in terms of a severely depleted player pool, this even without taking into account the large number of foreign players who have now opted out of their contract with the ICL and have become eligible with their respective boards again.
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