Former cricketers part of ICL: Kapil Dev to head its Executive Board

Former Indian captain Kapil Dev will head the Executive Board of the Zee Group backed Indian Cricket League (ICL). The announcement was made in Mumbai today.

New Delhi, May 14 : Former Indian captain Kapil Dev will head the Executive Board of the Zee Group backed Indian Cricket League (ICL). The announcement was made in Mumbai today.

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

Rejoiced at being a part of the ICL, Kapil Dev said that he was thankful to the ICL at inviting him, and he would try to give back whatever he had learned from the game.

Expressing his happiness at being a part of the ICL, More said that the ICL was going to be very competitive and lot of international cricket stars are going to be a part of it.

Being proud to be a part of the ICL, Jones said this form of cricket would be a feast for cricket lovers and a good opportunity to search talent from within the country.

Commentator Tony Greg also praised the new form of cricket, saying ICL is all about opportunity to young Indians, it would give young players a chance to perform.

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.

The league, an annual feature, is expected to take-off around October this year. he Executive Board will perform the following functions

To harness the cricketing talent of the country, Zee plans to set-up cricket academies equipped with state of the art facilities across the country.

Sports and medicine experts would be provided to ensure the fitness of players and a complete record of the behaviour pattern, diet-plan and game stats of the cricketers in the academy would be maintained.

Zee will also appoint talent scouts in all 35 states to hunt for young players to play in the ICL.

ANI