Windies cricketers won’t be banned from IPL-Chairman

HYDERABAD, India, CMC-The chairman of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Ranjib Biswal, has said that West Indies’ cricketers would not face any ban from the tournament after pulling out midway through their tour of India.

Fears of the ban surfaced following the pull out which the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) says would cost them about US 65 million dollars in losses.

A pay dispute with the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) forced the players to follow through with threats to quit the tour after the fourth one-day international in Dharamsala on Friday, with one more ODI, a Twenty20 and three tests remaining.

“It depends upon them (West Indies players). If they want to play IPL they are welcome,” Ranjib Biswal, the IPL chairman, said in Hyderabad, where the BCCI’s emergency working committee met to discuss the fallout of West Indies pulling out of the India tour last week.

ESPNcricinfo quoted a West Indies Cricket Board Director as calling for an IPL ban on the core group of the players, who were instrumental in West Indies aborting the India tour.

But Biswal said the issue of participation of West Indies players had not at all come up for discussion.

The IPL governing council also announced that the next season of the IPL will be played between April 9 and May 24.