Kochi Tuskers Management Refuses to Accept BCCI’s Renewed Offer to Settle Longstanding Dispute
Aug 23, 2017 at 3:48 PM
The Story
One wrong step can cost millions of business entities when high stakes are involved. BCCI committed one such blunder and will now pay a hefty price for it. Back in 2011, the BCCI wrongfully terminated Kochi Tuskers on the grounds of weak arbitration.
By doing so, they pocketed Kochi’s bank guarantee of Rs153 crore and caused the team’s co-owners a further loss of Rs153 crore, as they had played one season and an additional Rs150 crore by way of player costs, operations and logistics.
Tuskers had bought the franchise in 2010-11 for a total value of Rs1533 crore.
Negotiations meet dead ends twice
In the most recent meeting to discuss negotiation and bury matter entirely, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) offered Kochi Tuskers Kerala Rs 750 crores. The management of the Kochi IPL team, however, seem uninterested in the renewed offer and indications suggest that it would take a round of talks to resolve the dispute.
The BCCI had already offered once in June which was also turned down. The BCCI had offered Tuskers a shocking Rs440 crore as ‘settlement’ and then raised it to Rs460 crore back then.
This time around, Mukesh Patel, one of the key men in the franchise negotiations, was absent. It is understood that money isn’t the thing which is currently in Kochi management’s thought process, it is eyeing a comeback to the league and has even offered to agree on a compensation lower than what BCCI has penned down to pay if the apex cricket board reinstates the team.
If not, they want the full compensation, which sums to a whopping Rs 1400 crores (interest calculated), to be paid.
“Either they should give us the full amount or reinstate our side with a reduced amount,” a franchise source said. “It is not that there were never more than eight teams in the IPL.” Kochi were one of the two franchises added to the IPL in the 2011edition, along with Pune Warriors, taking the number of teams that season to ten. The BCCI, of course, maintains that the number of IPL teams cannot be increased.