Under fire IMG summoned by BCCI

The International Management Group (IMG) is once again in the news for the wrong reasons.

The agency, which conceptualised the Indian Premier League, has been summoned by the Board of Control for Cricket in India to explain its role in the creation of so-called parallel IPL.

A couple of IMG officials were reportedly present at a meeting in New Delhi on March 31 when some representatives of the English counties discussed with Lalit Modi, the suspended IPL chairman, the feasibility of having a franchise-based league in England.

It is now confirmed that two IMG officials — Andrew Wildblood, executive vice-president and Peter Griffiths, senior vice-president and director of operations — were present at the meeting where a blue print for a franchise-based league was reportedly prepared.

The BCCI, it is learnt, now wants to ascertain IMG’s role in the formation of such a league which ECB has said is ‘detrimental’ to world cricket. In fact, the ECB has demanded life ban on the agency.

“We also wish to take action against IMG for promoting this along with Modi and to seek their banning from world cricket. ICC regulations are very clear concerning contacts of this nature which are forbidden,” ECB chairman Giles Clarke wrote in a letter.

The BCCI, apparently, has taken cognisance of ECB’s complaint. On Thursday, it issued a show-cause notice to Modi and on Friday, it sent summons to the IMG to meet its officials in Mumbai on May 17. It is not yet clear if the BCCI will hold a meeting of the IPL Governing Council that day.

Sources say IMG could lose its Rs26-crore-a-year deal with the IPL unless it comes out with a ‘valid explanation.’

“If they don’t present a valid explanation, the Board might take serious action against IMG,” one official said. IMG’s deal with the IPL has been in jeopardy since Modi’s expulsion on April 25.
Comments from IMG officials or Modi could not be elicited but the former IPL chairman put out his views on Twitter.

“Another day. Another show cause notice. Any guesses as to who’s purpose ECB’s Giles Clarke was attempting to serve.” He further tweeted: “At IPL Finals I used a quotation from Bhagwad Gita ‘Fear NOT from what is Untrue’. I believe in this. Thus I am unperturbed by allegations.”

Meanwhile, English county officials have denied Clarke’s allegations. “Yorkshire’s chairman Colin Graves rejected any implication that Modi and his group had been involved in secret or destructive negotiations and insisted that Clarke had been given notes of the meeting”, English media reported.

“It was a fact-finding mission. Lalit did not put a proposition on the table. There were no secret proposals, no secret agenda, nothing underhand,” Graves was quoted as saying.

“Stewart Regan took notes of the meeting and we forwarded them to all the Test grounds. I then passed those notes to Giles Clarke,” Graves said.