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.