Subhash Chandra, Commissioner, ICL

Subhash Chandra Goel, the Chairman of Essel Group, launched a private cricket league in April 2007. This new entity is called the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and would follow the Twenty20 format. The first tournament of the league started on November 30, 2007 and concluded on December 16, 2007. The tournament was played at Mayajaal Cricket Ground in Chennai, Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Gurgaon, near Delhi, Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad and Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula, near Chandigarh. The traditional cricket venues of cricket in India were denied to ICL, which incidentally, are not owned by the BCCI.

Subhash Chandra was born on November 30, 1950, in Hissar, a major city of Haryana. He left formal education after 12th and never attended college. Instead, he joined the family business of trading and exporting rice. He was only nineteen years old then. Subhash Chandra started a vegetable oil unit which was an instant success. In 1981, he founded Essel Packaging Limited, after visiting a packaging exhibition. It was later merged with the Swiss group, Propack AG and was renamed, Essel Propack Limited, the largest speciality packaging company in the world.

In 1991, viewers in India were under the firm grip of Doordarshan, the state-controlled TV network. Subhash Chandra was the first in India to understand the huge business potential of satellite television. He launched the first private satellite TV station in India. Zee TV started on October 2, 1992, followed by Zee News, Zee Cinema and Music Asia. Today Zee TV is the most popular television network in India with more than 500 million viewers in 120 countries.

Indian Cricket League (ICL)

Indian Cricket League (ICL) is a private cricket league, promoted by Subhash Chandra of the Essel Group. The announcement of the launch was made by Chandra on April 3, 2007. Subhash Chandra is also the founder and chairman of Zee TV. In 2003, the telecast rights for the Cricket World Cup were denied to the Zee Telefilms. Subhash Chandra lost the bid again in 2004. Zee TV made another attempt for the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy. They were once denied the broadcasting rights and therefore decided to create their own content. That was the logic behind creating ICL.

Indian Cricket League was set up with a Rupees 100 crores corpus fund with prize money of one million US dollars, for the winning team in the first tournament scheduled for November 30, 2007. Some famous international cricketers were invited on July 24, 2007 to sign the most lucrative deal to play for ICL. Brian Lara, former West Indian Captain, Jason Gillespie from Australia, Andrew Hall and Justine Kemp from South Africa, Imran Farhat, Abdul Razzaq, Taufiq Umar and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan from Pakistan and many cricketers from other countries signed-up to play for ICL. Former Indian Skipper Kapil Dev, Kiran More, Tony Greig and Dean Jones were hired to run the league.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) immediately reacted and refused to recognise the ICL. To counter the ICL, the BCCI announced its own version called the Indian Premier League to play Twenty20 cricket tournament from April18, 2008.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) supported the BCCI decision and refused to recognise ICL as an official league. Other boards from Test playing nations went along with BCCI and imposed bans on their players to participate in rebel Indian Cricket League. In December 2007, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) banned those Pakistani players who appeared in the ICL, from playing their national and international cricket. This decision provoked  worldwide condemnation.  Imran Khan  and  Javed  Miandad  criticised the  PCB decision.

Indian Premier League

Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional Twenty20 cricket competition created and promoted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and backed by International Cricket Council (ICC). IPL is the brainchild of Lalit Kumar Modi, who is also the chairman and commissioner of the league. Indian Premier League is modeled along the lines of club football in Europe, specially the English Premier League. Lalit Modi has claimed that the idea to monetise Indian Cricket was in his mind since the mid 1990s, but before he could actually implement his plans, Subhash Chandra of Zee Television started an unofficial version called Indian Cricket League (ICL).