Mumbai, Oct 25: All the players who were contracted with the Deccan Chargers, whose IPL contract has been terminated by the cricket board, will be available for picking by Sun TV Network which on Thursday won the Hyderabad franchise for Rs 85.05 crore per year, said BCCI president N Srinivasan.
"All the players of Deccan Chargers are available to the new franchise. I think they have signed agreements and the new franchise will have time till October 31st to decide who they want to retain, but all the Deccan Chargers players are now with Sun Group," Srinivasan told reporters after the opening of the bids by the IPL governing council.
"The franchise now has a choice to retain whoever they want and decide by October 31st. As far as the player their interest is completely protected and they have also been paid for the last year," the board chief said.
Srinivasan also said that the value that the Board got from the new owners was twice of what Deccan Chargers paid in 2008.
"If you see, this is twice the value of Deccan Chargers (who had bid for Rs 428 crore). If you take into account the sharing of central rights compared to the earlier expansion of franchise, you will find that this bid represents a higher value; it is a very good value.
"That is because the original eight franchises have ten-year contracts; so five years is left. So after ten years the revenue sharing is that you don't pay a franchise fee but you pay 20 percent of your income. So that is consistent for all of them.
"More importantly it is a very credible franchise owner who is in the media so they will add a lot of value to the league so that is something to be very happy about," he said.
"It is not a question of how many bids came in but the fact is that we got a good bid," added Srinivasan.
There was only one other bidder, PVP Ventures whose bid amount was Rs 69.03 crore. Two other interested parties bought the Invitation to Tender, priced at Rs 5 lakh by the Board and non-refundable, but did not bid, according to sources.
"As far as the BCCI is concerned, it is a very good value and a good franchise coming so it will add luster to the league," said Srinivasan.
Sun TV Network CFO, S L Narayanan said that the new franchise had a fine set of Deccan Chargers cricketers to choose while forming their team like former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara and South Africa pace ace Dale Steyn.
"What BCCI has advised us is that at our option we could retain the entire team. We also have opportunities to get more players; there are outstanding cricketing names here like Dale Steyn, Kumar Sangakkara, Cameron White, JP Duminy, Shikhar Dhawan and Ishant Sharma," said Narayanan.
"It's a great team but we will decide on the actual composition of the team and support staff in the next few days. We are very excited," he said.
The team's new name will be decided in a few days' time, he said and termed the deal with BCCI as "very attractive".
"The price that we paid is a very attractive price because the last deal (Pune Warriors) was almost at 170 crore per annum and we got it for 50 percent of the last transaction price. It is a very attractive deal. We will create shareholder value and I have no doubt about that in my mind.
"We have a fair understanding of the inflow and what kind of expenses, so we have done our maths and this is going to be a very attractive deal for us.
"This whole thing fits with the whole theme of media and entertainment. IPL is a great property and for the foreseeable future cricket would be the sport of choice for so many Indians.
"I don't think we are going to suddenly start playing baseball or something. So it fits in with the overall theme of media and entertainment and it is a very good price that we are buying it for," he said.
"I think at the end of the day cricket will continue to be toast of audiences in this country. Cricket and films are religion in this country and we are very well positioned in both," Narayanan added.
