At a press conference here today, Essel Group and Infrastructure Leasing & Finance announced the Indian Cricket League which, according to Subhas Chandra, chairman of Essel Group and Zee Telefilms Ltd, will draw from the national talent pool to make a “professional league”.

He said that the league will carry a prize purse of $1 million, which though in itself is small compared to the amount of money sloshing in the Indian cricketing system, is good enough to keep drawing on raw talent and that “competitive” and not “placid” wickets will be provided to the players.

He said six “clubs” (not identified) will be playing in the first year of the league and that the league is expected to grow.

Zee will be the obvious broadcasters, but it was not spelled out if it will be Zee Sports. Zee Sports already hold the rights to the National Football League.

Matches will be played in the Twenty20 format and then also in the ODI format, it was announced.

The teams are expected to be composed of four internationals, two Indians, and eight budding cricketers. Only the Premier Hockey League, which is broadcast by ESPN-Star Sports has such a format now.

The league, said Chandra, will be backed up by a corpus of Rs 100 crore. This money will be used for three years, with the number of teams going up (to 16) with the years and also an academy in the pipeline.

The Essel group also had the plan of setting up cricket academies and the BCCI was free to draw from the pool of talented players.

Chandra said this was not an affront with the Board and that there will be no pressure on the players to be contracted with either, or going over for national duty when asked to by the Board.

[BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi later reacted strongly to this and said it was not feasible because “if Chandra is planning a local tournament, he can’t use our sports facilities without our permission,” and said “If he is roping in international players, that requires BCCI and ICC sanction and I haven’t heard about it till now,” add agencies.]

Parallels are drawn with Kerry Packer and his breakaway league that spawned one-day cricket, but the basic format for the proposed league (to be started from June-July) does not encompass more than small league matches so far.

Zee had competed with Nimbus Corporation in the BCCI’s domestic broadcast rights in 2006 but, having placed a $ 513 million bid, had lost to Nimbus’ 612 million offer. At this point Zee has the rights to India’s overseas matches in non-ICC meets for which it paid 219.15 milion.