The second edition of the Indian Cricket League starts in Panchkula (Chandigarh) and with the huge hype surrounding IPL (Indian Premier League), ICL is being looked upon a second grade tournament. But most people do not seem to care about the fact that the BCCI and the cricketing boards have unfairly wielded their power and almost forced the ICL to be inferior to the IPL.

The ICL tournament has given a second option to almost a hundred young players from all over India who were being pushed away from the system. Kapil Dev, the man behind the Indian Cricket League, promised and is ensuring that the young cricketers are getting the best possible support system and remuneration. These young cricketers, which included players in the same calibre of todays cricket heroes like Rohit Sharma, Praveen Kumar and Ishant Sharma, chose to play in the ICL. These include Ambati Raydu, Abhisehk Jhunjhunwala, Mortaza to name a few. Now these players cannot even play for their states and not even club cricket. They are treated like outcastes by all state and local cricket boards under pressure from BCCI. Few of them lost their jobs, got transferred. It so happened a local Mumbai cricket match was stopped when the state association got to know that an ICL player was playing in the match, and the player was kicked out and only then they could continue.

The international players have been banned from playing for their country and recently the English Cricket board announced that anyone playing in the ICL would be banned from playing county cricket too. Pakistan is the only country which is rethinking about the ban, mainly because more than 20 international players from Pakistan are playing in the league.

The BCCI did not stop at just banning the players. It ensured that ICL does not get a single stadium in the whole country to stage the tournament. The advertisers were threatened with action. Kapil Dev, the man who led India to its only World Cup success, was kicked out of cricket academies, refused pension. You can imagine the level to BCCI officially or unofficially stooped that a Bollywood movie which has small roles for three of the ICL international players for forced to throw them out.

Well its a surprise that political power and administrative power can be misused to such an extent. And Indians playing in their own country are banned from selection to represent their states and even their nation. This should stop.