By IANS
Mumbai : The breakaway Indian Cricket League (ICL) Monday announced that 44 Indian cricketers and six foreigners, including former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, have signed for it.
Most of the players were paraded at a press conference here at which former India captain Kapil Dev – head of the ICL executive board – was present.
Besides Inzamam, his colleague and Pakistan vice-captain Mohammed Yusuf, Imran Farhat and Abdur Razzaq and retired South Africans Lance Klusener and Nicky Boje are the foreigners who will play in the six-city league to be held this winter, according to Zee TV.
Among the big Indian names signed are Deep Dasgupta, Dinesh Mongia, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Jai Prakash Yadav, T. Kumaran, Abbas Ali and Laxmi Ratan Shukla.
The other recruits include promising youngsters like Ambati Rayudu, Abhishek Jhunjunwala, Ali Murtuza, Dheeraj Jadhav, Ishant Malhotra, Manish Mishra, Vishwaraj Mohan Joshi, Shrey Khanolkar, Sumit Kalia, Vinay Kumar and Shalabh Srivastava.
Besides Kapil, former Indian cricketer Sandeep Patil, former chairman of the Indian selection board Kiran More and former India spinner Erapali Prassana – who joined the ICL Executive Board – were present at the press meet.
“The amount of courage they have shown … perhaps even I did not have that much courage,” Kapil said, pointing towards the players lined up on the occasion.
“ICL recruits are free to play for India whenever they want,” he said.
Zee Television, which has started the rebel league, has set aside a corpus fund of Rs.1 billion ($232.26 million) for the ICL, as announced by its chief Subhash Chandra while launching the concept April 3.
The ambitious league threatens to do what late Australian millionaire Kerry Packer did almost three decades ago when he hired the world’s top players for the World Series Cricket following his fight for television rights with the Australian board.