Team India to meet today to discuss Indian Premier League

M S Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir and Zaheer Khan will meet in Mumbai today to discuss issues pertaining personal endorsement deals during the Indian Premier League (IPL) that gets underway less than a week after the World Cup, it is learnt.

They will also discuss the new clause in their contracts that denies them 20 per cent of their fees in case their teams fail to qualify for the Champions League. Players recently met BCCI president Shashank Manohar to discuss the same.

Prez assures players
Manohar assured them that the matter would be discussed at the IPL Governing Council meeting tomorrow. MiD DAY learnt that the players are threatened by ambush marketing of personal endorsements, and hence want to tackle the issue collectively. The IPL Governing Council will follow ICC rules that allow players to do endorsements only seven days before a tournament.

Hence, players cannot appear in any IPL-based endorsements between February 10 and April 4 since the team will be heading for a preparatory camp in Bengaluru starting February 9. The World Cup will run from Feb 19 to April 2.

However, a senior logistics manager of the one of original eight franchises is not worried about the lack of availability of players.

"They (players) came back from South Africa on January 24. We have already managed to get some endorsements out of the way, and our campaigns for IPL-4 are on target. All our sponsors are satisfied.

"We don't look at the World Cup as a threat as far as our marketing is concerned. There will be huge publicity and ads as soon as the World Cup ends," he said.

No confrontation
A senior player from Indian team told MiD DAY, "Yes, we will have a meeting among ourselves because these new rules are not suitable. We are not going to confront the Board, but want to let them know our problem. That's why we will meet the Board President."

"I believe they are meeting to discuss issues pertaining to the new IPL contracts.

"The players are more than welcome to have discussions and get back to the Board.

"We are not against that whatsoever," a BCCI official confirmed to MiD DAY.