High Court postpones IPL player retention deadline

The Bombay High Court has ruled that the BCCI must extend the deadline for IPL teams to nominate the players they wish to retain for the 2011 tournament from December 6 to December 8. The ruling came after Kings XI Punjab, one of the two franchises that were expelled from the league, accused the board of "deliberately" delaying the arbitration hearings over their expulsion so the original deadline could expire. The decision was confirmed to ESPNcricinfo by Sundar Raman, the IPL's chief executive.

The High Court's decision is another blow for the BCCI as it seeks to keep the two franchises, the other being Rajasthan Royals, out of the IPL. Both teams were expelled on Oct 10, for what the board asserted were transgressions of shareholding and ownership norms that threatened to "shake the very foundation of the tender process". The two franchises have since taken the BCCI to court and their cases are now in arbitration.

The Punjab hearings were due to begin on Thursday, but the arbitrator, Justice BN Srikrishna, decided to stand down after the BCCI objected to him on the grounds that he represented the Wadia group, which is a part owner of the franchise, in many of their cases in the past. Srikrishna was the board's original choice for arbitrator.

"BCCI kept silent deliberately... They strung us along for one week as the deadline for negotiating with 'marquee players' is to expire on December 6," the PTI news agency quoted Punjab's lawyer Darius Khambata as saying.

Srikrishna is also the arbitrator in the hearings involving Rajasthan. On Tuesday, he issued an interim order staying the team's expulsion. The stay restored their rights as a franchise for a period of six weeks after he issues his final ruling. These included the right to participate in the upcoming player auction in January. In his interim order, the judge said the BCCI's argument for expelling the team was "too facile to cut ice".

According to the recently remodelled rules for IPL 4, teams can retain up to four players, only three of whom can be Indians before the new auction. The retained players must have been part of the franchise's registered squads for the 2010 season, and will not be part of January's auction, which is meant to begin the countdown to the 2011 season, and a new three-year contract period for the players.