Lalit Modi, the creator of the Indian Premier League, has refused to be drawn on speculation he is part of a plot to create a breakaway governing body for world cricket.
The International Cricket Council has launched an investigation into the possibility of a rival global organisation being set up after the Indian conglomerate Essel, which ran the now-defunct rebel Indian Cricket League from 2007 to 2009, was discovered to have registered companies with similar names to cricket boards in Australia, New Zealand and Scotland.
Those developments, along with the registration of similar-sounding website domains by an employee of Ten Sports, has fuelled talk that the Indian entrepreneur Modi, who was removed as the IPL commissioner in 2010, is now in partnership with Essel and its billionaire owner, Subhash Chandra, and a new tournament is in the offing.
Reacting to the Guardian’s report on Friday, Modi tweeted: “About time this happened,” prompting an article in the Mumbai Mirror to query whether he was involved. Modi reacted to this, writing: “Interesting story – no comments thou.”
Another linked with the project is the former Cricket Australia lawyer Dean Kino, who was a key figure on the board of the Champions League Twenty20 tournament until he resigned from both positions last September.
Kino’s close relationship with Modi was suggested as a reason why he was moved on from Cricket Australia at the time. But when contacted by the Guardian about his involvement with these recent moves by Essel, he said: “[The] registrations have nothing to do with me.”
