Sahara to dissociate with BCCI and IPL, to invest in 20 sports promotion centers

Sahara India today announced its dissociation with with BCCI and IPL and reinvest in setting up of 20 sports promotion centres, with an international standard sports academy. It will spend Rs 10 crore support every year for underprivileged sports achievers of yesteryear’s & present along with a host of other social development initiatives.

In a release, Sushanto Roy, Managing Director, Sahara Adventure Sports Limited said that its association with Team India was primarily emotional. In 2001, cricket was not as rich but had become a religion in our country. Sushanto Roy writes that Sahara had requested the then BCCI President, Jagmohan Dalmia to go for an open auction, for the Indian team’s sponsorship inviting only interested Indian Corporates, since it was not right that it should go to some MNC. But for obvious, unavoidable reasons, BCCI did not accept that. After 03 months, one fine morning, Shahara Chairman was told that the sponsorship had gone to an MNC. Immediately, Shahara Chairman called Dalmiaji and expressed his desire to take up the sponsorship. He responded quite positively and requested for a 10% increase in the price, which our Hon’ble Chairman immediately accepted.

Sushanto Roy states “Now after a 11-year journey as sponsors, we can say with surety that cricket has become very rich. Many rich people are there to support cricket with a strong will to do so. So, with absolute peace of mind we can exit from cricket under BCCI and are now exiting with a heavy heart. It was an emotional decision for us to start this sponsorship but our emotions were never appreciated and many genuine situations, were not given due consideration at all.”

Sahara’s first entry into IPL was thwarted in 2008 when it was disqualified, owing to a small technicality on the whims and fancies of BCCI. Yet its Bid was not opened. Last year, Sahara entered the IPL on the basis of information in the media and everywhere else that 94 matches will be played among 10 teams. The bid price was accordingly calculated, but only 74 matches were played. Sahara says that it is still pursuing continuously with the BCCI to refund the extra bid money proportionately. It has been denied on the basis of strict rules.

In the interest of the tournament, Sahara said that it repeatedly tried it’s best to pursue the BCCI for open auction of all players so that they achieve level playing field and all teams are equally balanced from the quality players’ point of view. Again, as per BCCI’s strict rules it was denied and again and Sahara was deprived of natural justice. 12 of the best players were retained by the existing teams then. The two new teams then requested for allowing us at least one extra foreign player but that too was denied, quoting rules.

Once during a World Cup tournament, Sahara’s name was not allowed because there was a clash of our Airline with a South African airline. In two major tournaments, the team had to play without the ‘SAHARA’ logo. “It was ICC’s decision so we could realize that it was for no fault of BCCI and we also did not want the players to suffer. As per the rules, we were not supposed to pay sponsorship money for those matches but we still paid the players share of the amount in entirety. Sadly, we never found BCCI believing in genuine give and take,” said the release.

Furthermore, Sahara said that Yuvraj Singh will be paid his full fee this year with condition as a Guardian that his priority should be health care and he should not play till he has fully recovered.

Sahara had requested the BCCI on the basis of the fact that it had only one Indian marquee player, it should be allowed to add price of Yuvraj Singh in its auction purse, during the 4th February auction because it had later taken Sourav Ganguly at 0.4 million. Again, Sahara was denied on the basis of the rule book. Sahara says that this peculiar situation of Yuvraj Singh is silent in the rule book because it probably talks only about players who are temporarily injured. Incidentally, once during the Champion’s League tournament, one of the Indian IPL teams had a lot of injured players so they were rightly, out of natural justice, allowed to break the rules and take one extra foreign player. We appreciated this natural justice.

Sushanto Roy states “We really feel such one-sided emotional relationship cannot be dragged any further. We are withdrawing from all cricket under BCCI/ However, we don’t want to give any problem to the BCCI and we also feel that the players should not suffer. BCCI will definitely take 2-4 months to get a new sponsor and we will continue paying the sponsorship money till then. All other IPL team players, coaches and other such associates will definitely get their due this year, in case they do not get a chance to play.”

Sahara has asked BCCI to sell its team “Pune Warriors” to some other interested party immediately.