Brian Lara confirms joining Indian Cricket League

Former West Indies captain Brian Lara will join Zee Groups Indian Cricket League (ICL) as one of the captains of 16 teams to feature in the league.

Mumbai, July 23 : Former West Indies captain Brian Lara will join Zee Group's Indian Cricket League (ICL) as one of the captains of 16 teams to feature in the league.

Zee Sports CEO Himanshu Modi today confirmed Lara's participation in ICL, which is being termed as a parallel league to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

"Lara gave his nod for joining the league late last week," Modi said.

He added that former Indian players Madan Lal and Balwinder Singh Sandhu would join ICL as coach.

Reports were making the rounds that former Australian fast bowler Glenn McGrath and New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns would also join the league. Modi, however, did not confirm it.

He went on to say that ICL is in talks with few of the grounds in the country and have written letters to the various grounds.

Former Indian captain Kapil Dev has been appointed as the head of the Executive Board of the Zee Group backed ICL.

Other members of the Executive Board include former wicketkeeper and ex-chief selector of the BCCI Kiran More, former England captain Tony Greig and Australian cricketer-turned-commentator Dean Jones.

The Zee Group has announced that the ICL will be set up with a corpus of 100 crore rupees. It would have six teams or clubs in its initial year.

Within three years, the number of teams would be increased to 16. Each team in the league would have four international players.

Zee will also appoint talent scouts in all Indian states to hunt for young players to play in the ICL.

ANI