The Madras High Court has declined to interfere with a regulation of the BCCI which made an exclusion of events like IPL or Champions League, Twenty20, for administrators to have directly or indirectly any commercial interest in the matches or events conducted by the board.
Dismissing appeals filed by A.C. Muthiah challenging an order of a single Judge, a Division Bench comprising Justices D. Murugesan and M. Sathyanarayanan, in its judgment said it was unable to agree with the appellant's contention that the clause 6.2.4 should have been included with IPL or Champions League Twenty20. As the clause stood today, it excluded certain events wherein even the administrators could franchise a team in Twenty20 matches, which was purely commercial in nature.
Further, there was no material placed before the court whether the IPL matches were official matches conducted by the ICC or conducted on commercial basis. In the absence of those material and in view of the fact that the parties would also be entitled to let in evidence at the time of trial, the exclusion in the clause which had been incorporated in the rules and regulations could not be stayed unless there was a strong prima facie case made out.
