Expulsion unfair, says Rajasthan co-owner Badale

Manoj Badale, co-owner of Rajasthan Royals, has said the team has provided the BCCI and the government with all the information they had asked for but was not given a chance to defend itself before being expelled from the league.

"That seems to us at least unfair," he told the news channel Times Now. "It seems surprising to us that these issues, all of which were communicated, all of which were documented for the past three years, are suddenly brought up when there is regime change as opposed to being brought up in time."

Badale said he met with BCCI president Shashank Manohar last week and was told the team would be treated fairly. He did not reveal any other details of the meeting, however, saying it was a private conversation and not something he wanted to discuss with the media.

While the franchise issued a statement in the wake of the announcement saying it would be considering legal action, Badale told another news channel, NDTV, that in his experience these things get resolved around a table, and it is only if negotiations fail that legal action will be considered. He also defended his franchise's record of transparency.

"We voluntarily chose to submit an enormous document with the Foreign Investment Promotion Board back in July 2009, which went into extraordinary detail about our ownership structure."

The IPL governing council ejected Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab from the league this past Sunday on charges of transgression of shareholding and ownership norms that threatened to "shake the very foundation of the tender process".

The two franchises are now considering their options. A statement from Rajasthan Royals hinted at legal redress without explicitly mentioning it. The Punjab franchise said its legal team was studying the BCCI's decision, which it also called unfair and not in the IPL's collaborative spirit, and hoped for negotiations to settle the issue.