The Apex Council also decided to extend the Impact Player rule to domestic T20
BCCI has initiated a process to regulate retired players’ participation in overseas T20 leagues. The Apex Council, which met here on Friday, though stopped short of enforcing any cooling off time-frame for players.
“We will be coming out with a policy to prevent the trend of pre-determined retirements,” BCCI secretary Jay Shah told reporters. “Once the policy is decided in a month or so, we will send it back to the Apex Council for approval.”
Currently, Indians who announce international retirement and from IPL can play in overseas T20 leagues. But a spike in the number of retired players, no longer in IPL contention, taking to overseas T20 leagues has irked BCCI officials.
The Pathan brothers – Irfan and Yousuf – Parthiv Patel, S Sreesanth and Stuart Binny will be playing the Zim Afro T10 league in a fortnight. Ambati Rayudu will be part of Major League Cricket in USA. Robin Uthappa and Yusuf Pathan competed in ILT20 earlier in the year.
Many of these players may be past their prime but any Indian presence helps competing leagues attract sponsors and broadcast eyeballs. That is what BCCI wants to guard against. Although the argument from the Indian board’s side is it’s a forward-looking idea to prevent talent-drain.
“It’s not so straight forward to force retired players to cool off as they are not contracted,” said one player on condition of anonymity.
It is understood that the board will be seeking legal opinion on this. BCCI may even ask retired players to seek NOCs (no objections certificates), the guidelines for which are yet to determined.
Impact player rule
BCCI also decided that the Impact Player rule of IPL 2023 will be extended to domestic Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 trophy. Based on feedback from all stakeholders after IPL there will however be a few tweaks. In IPL 2023, teams would name a squad of 15 at the toss and one impact player could be introduced at any stage, effectively making it a 12-a-side contest.
Specialist coaches for women’s team
While former Mumbai captain Amol Mazumdar is set to take over as head coach of the India women’s team soon, interviews will soon be conducted for batting and bowling coaches. Former India off-spinner Nooshin Al Khadeer has currently gone with the Indian team to Bangladesh as the interim coach.
The Apex body also gave a go ahead for India’s participation – both men’s and women’s team – in the 2023 Asian Games.
Source : Hindustan Times
