“Where will we get players to make eight teams after so many have left us? Most of the foreign players, too, have cut ties with the ICL. It’s highly unlikely that the league will take place,” an official told The Indian Express.

In terms of imports, the big setback for the Essel Group-supported league came because of the growing tensions between India and Pakistan, resulting in the defending champions Lahore Badshah being automatically ruled out. Several players in the other foreign team in the league, Dhaka Warriors, have also returned to the Bangladesh Cricket Board fold.

‘Still standing’

But the Head of Essel Group’s corporate communications, Roland Landers, insisted that the ICL wasn’t closing down. “We still have 40-50 players out of the original 140-odd on our roster. As and when the need arises, we will recruit fresh talent. The league is on, we’re not closing down. The next season is in October-November and it’s still early days,” Landers said.

Along with the 79 players, there were 22 others for whom the BCCI opened its doors on Tuesday. These include several high-profile coaches with the ICL teams, some umpires, and a few support-staff members. It has been learnt that some of the back-room staff connected with the ICL has been either laid off or shifted to other divisions of the Essel Group, which has diverse business interests.

But the ICL’s two biggest names Kapil Dev and Kiran More, who played a big role during the launch of the league in the wake of India’s disastrous showing in the 2007 World Cup and Zee’s clash with the BCCI over television rights, are still part of the league.

Future tense

The BCCI, after a sudden and unexpected change of heart, had said that the transition back to domestic cricket would be smooth for the rebel players. The BCCI secretary N Srinivasan added in a press statement: “The BCCI, after scrutinising their requests, has written to the concerned state associations that these players are eligible to play in the domestic tournaments for this year.”

But for the 79 players, it is once again time to deal with an uncertain future. There was an ambiguity about their career path when they had joined ICL two years ago, and today it is the same again. Despite the board’s green signal, there were fears among them that the state associations would hold a grudge against players with an ICL past.

Former UP paceman Shalabh Srivastava said: “I hope we won’t be treated differently. If we’re good enough, we should be included in the Ranji squad. The BCCI has put a year long cooling down period for the ICL players to play international cricket.

The complete list

Players: Rajiv Kumar (Jharkhand), Kiran Powar, Rakesh Patel (Baroda), Shiv Sagar Singh, Abhiskek Jhunjhunwala, Subhomoy Das, Sayed Akhlakh Ahamad, Rohan Gavaskar, Subhjit Paul, Deep Dasgupta (Bengal), Robin Morris, Nikhil Mandale (Mumbai), Shreyas Khanolkar, Tejinder Pal Singh, P Vivek, J P Yadav, Baburao Yadav, Avinash Yadav (Railways), Suyesh Burkul, Dheeraj Jadhav, Raviraj Patil, Pushkaraj Joshi, Anupam Sanklecha, Ranjeet Khirid (Maharashtra), Abhinav Bali, Kuunal Lall (Delhi), Abid Nabi, Dhruv Mahajan (Jammu and Kashmir), T Sudhindra, Mohnish Mishra, Abbas Ali, Sachin Dholpure, Shridhar Iyer, Abhishek Tamrakar, Bhima Rao (Madhya Pradesh), Syed Zakaria Zuffri, Parviz Aziz, Abu Nechim Ahmed, Sujay Tarafder, Pritam Das ( Assam), Dinesh Mongia, Reetinder Sodhi, Karanveer Singh, Harpreet Singh, Sumit Kalia, Love Ablish, Rajesh Sharma, Sarabjeet Singh, Ishan Malhotra, Bipul Sharma, Amit Uniyal (Punjab), Stuart Binny (Karnataka), Abdul Azeem Khan, Alfred Absolom, Ibrahim Khaleel, Indra Shekar Reddy, P S Niranjan, Anirudh Singh, Shashank Nag, Ambati Rayudu (Hyderabad). Syed Shahbuddin (Andhra), Hemang Badani, V Devendran, G Vignesh, Syed Mohammed, R Jesuraj, S Sriram, R Sathish, K Martin Sanjeev, T Kumaran, S Vasanth Saravanan, J Hariesh, D Tamilkumaran, C Hemant Kumar (TN), Gaurav Gupta (Haryana), Avinash Yadav, Shalabh Srivastava, Ali Murtaza, Hamid Zaidi (UP).

Coaches: Sandeep Patil, E Prasanna, Madan Lal, Rajesh Kamath, Karsan Ghavri, Pranab Roy, Ashok Malhotra, Rajesh Chauhan, Balwinder Sandhu, Bharath Reddy, Ajit Wadekar. Kiran Padhiyar (video analyst), K Martin Sanjeev, Rajamani Prabhu, Dinesh Vaghela (umpire), Atul Wassan, A Burrows (umpire), Suhas Pawar (trainer), Rajesh Mundhva (umpire), Chezhian (umpire), V Satish (umpire) and S Shyam Sundar.