The BCCI had found itself in the middle of many conflicts with various cricket boards around the world as a result of the IPL. The main point of contention was that signed players should always be available to their country for international tours, even if it overlaps with the IPL season. To address this, the BCCI officially requested that the ICC institute a time period in the International Tours Program solely for the IPL season. This request was not granted at a subsequent meeting held by the ICC. [5]
English Cricket Board
Because the inaugural IPL season coincided with the English County season as well as England’s tour of New Zealand, the ECB and local County Cricket Boards raised their concerns to the BCCI over player poaching. The ECB made it abundantly clear that they would not sign No Objection Certificates for players—a prerequisite for playing in the IPL. Chairmen of the local Counties also made it clear that players contracted to them were required to fulfill their commitment to their county. As a result of this, no English player signed on for either of the two IPL player auctions and to date, Dimitri Mascarenhas remains the only player to have signed with the IPL. [15]
Another result of the ECB’s on-going fear of player poaching was a proposed radical response of creating their own Twenty20 tournament that would be similar in structure to the IPL. The league—titled the English Premier League—would feature 21 teams in three groups of seven and would occur towards the end of the summer season. [16]
Cricket Australia Board
The BCCI also experienced run-ins with Cricket Australia over player availability for Australia’s tour of the West Indies and the CAB’s desire for global protection of their sponsors. The CAB had feared that sponsors of the IPL (and its teams) that directly competed with their sponsors would jeopardize already existing arrangements. This issue was eventually resolved [17] and it was also agreed upon that Australian players would be fully available for the West Indies tour.
Pakistan Cricket Board
Many players from the Pakistan Cricket Team who were not offered renewed central contracts (or decided to reject new contracts) decided to join the rival Indian Cricket League. Two such players—Naved-ul-Hasan and Mushtaq Ahmed also held contracts with English Counties. The PCB decided to issue No Objection Certificates for these players to play with their county teams on the basis that since they were no longer contracted to the PCB, there was no point in not granting them their NOCs. The latter did not sit well with the BCCI, as it went against the hard line stance they had taken on players who joined the ICL.
Other Boards
Smaller boards like the WICB and NZCB have raised concerns over the impact the IPL will have on their player development and already fragile financial situation. Since players from smaller cricketing nations are not compensated as much, they have more motivation to join the lucrative IPL. The latter has obvious negative effects on their national development of cricket.
