IPL owners meet put off; talk of more RTM options gathers steam

The meeting of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise owners has been postponed. It was scheduled for April 16 in Ahmedabad and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), according to multiple sources, has informed the franchise owners that in view of a change in the IPL programme, the meeting has been put off. A new date has not been informed even as certain the franchises have been taking a strong position against increasing the number of retentions.

The meeting was to discuss the way forward for the IPL from next year when there is a mega-auction. The BCCI top brass wanted to pick the brains of the owners on the number of retentions to be permitted and the size of the player purse. There has been talk about increasing the number of retentions from existing four and swell the player purse substantially from the current cap of Rs 100 crore.

However, there is a school of thought that the retention should not be more than one and the franchises should be allowed more Right To Match (RTM) options, a method, it has been argued, will be based on the market value and transparency. The contention has been that retention could potentially lead to surrogate and covert payments to the players.

The RTM formula would afford franchises the opportunity to acquire their existing players at a price determined during the live auction. The flipside to the RTM method is the possibility of certain franchises artificially inflating a player's bidding price so that the interested team will have to shell out extra money. But they also stand the risk of subsequently being obligated to purchase the player at the increased cost. While the talk has been of eight retentions, it has been contended that there should be one retention and seven RTM options. The BCCI, of course, has its own views on the way forward and it has not exactly made its stand.

The meeting between the BCCI/IPL officials and the franchise promoters was to be held on the sidelines of an IPL game between Gujarat Titans and Delhi Capitals in Ahmedabad. But that game has now been postponed by a day, as the BCCI has advanced the Kolkata Knight Riders-Rajasthan Royals game at the Eden to April 16. The re-jig was necessary in view of the Rama Navami festivities in Kolkata and the city police there expressed security concerns.