New Delhi: It had been coming for a while, and with audience interest never really picking up, the Champions League T20 tournament was on Wednesday given a quiet burial. A day after the Lodha Committee suspended Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals from the Indian Premier League for two years and banned team officials Gurunath Meiyappan (CSK) and Raj Kundra (RR) for life, the powers that be decided to drop the curtains on the T20 tournament jointly owned by the Indian, Australian and South African cricket boards.
“The Governing Council of the Champions League Twenty20 has confirmed that the CLT20 competition will be discontinued with immediate effect. The Governing Council of the CLT20, comprising representatives of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, Cricket South Africa and Cricket Australia made the decision unanimously,” a BCCI statement said. “As such the 2015 CLT20 scheduled for September and October will not go ahead as planned,” said the release.
In May this year, the three key stakeholders had reviewed options and mooted a mini-IPL to replace the CLT20, which lost two title sponsors within the space of four years Airtel and Nokia pulling the plug on their deals, And the BCCI is now faced with an ICC-sanctioned slot, but no event to fill the gap with. The Lodha panel’s findings quite possibly accelerated the decision as CSK and RR were both in line to play in this year’s edition of the CLT20, the former as defending champions.
“The competition was launched in 2009 by the BCCI with CA and CSA. The Governing Council determined that the discontinuation of the league was the most appropriate decision due to the tournament’s limited public following,” the statement said. Added Board secretary Anurag Thakur, “This has been a difficult decision as the Champions League T20 provided added context to a number of domestic Twenty 20 competitions around the world such as the IPL in India, Big Bash League in Australia and South Africa’s Ram Slam T20.
“It was a fantastic platform for players from around the world to showcase their talent and the participating teams thoroughly enjoyed the experience over the last six seasons.“Unfortunately, off the field, Champions League T20 wasn’t sustaining the interest of the fans as we had hoped. This decision was made, after consultation with all our commercial partners and meeting the contractual obligations of all parties involved,” he said.
