Kolkata: Former India captain Sourav Ganguly says he wants to play in the Indian Premier League for a few more years before looking at other cricketing assignments.

“I would like to play for some more years in IPL. May be after four or five years I will think about other option,” Ganguly, who was initially unsold in the IPL auction but later played for Pune Warriors as a replacement player, said.

“My first Test at Lords was the best for creating overall impact on my career. God was kind and after that I was destined to play for many years,” the former India captain added. “But in terms of quality, the hundred in Australia was the best. 90 against South Africa at Kanpur too was very good.”

Ganguly also praised Glenn McGrath, Zaheer Khan & Javagal Srinath amongst the bowlers. “Hard work never goes in vain,” the skipper explained. “Some players like Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara are very talented. But players like Virender Sehwag and I had to work hard to succeed.The day I went to bat thinking that my opponent bowlers won’t be able to get me out, I did well and the day I thought that my rival bowler had a better swing or craft, I could not perform as expected.”

Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh, who had earlier earned 15 per cent more than the highest-paid player in their respective teams for the ‘iconic’ status, are also in the same bracket as Dhoni. Harbhajan Singh is the other player in the same category.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has named around 65 Indian players in the first phase, who will go under the hammer in the auction, scheduled for January 8 and 9 next year. The BCCI has split the group in five categories of base price — Rs 1.84 crore, Rs 1.38 crore, Rs 92 lakh, Rs 46 lakh and Rs 23 lakh respectively. While the lowest base price for the inaugural IPL auction was Rs 45,73,000, the minimum for IPL-IV is Rs 23 lakh.

Sourav Ganguly, who, too, earned more for being an icon player, has been kept in the third category of Rs 92 lakh along with speedster Ishant Sharma.

According to BCCI secretary N. Srinivasan, however, players can approach the IPL governing council in case they want to be placed in some category other than specified. “A player can ask for another group within the five categories,” Srinivasan said.

Wriddhiman Saha, Manoj Tiwary, Ashok Dinda, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajit Agarkar, who have represented the Kolkata Knight Riders, are some of the players in the fourth bracket (Rs 46 lakh).

List of players up for auction:-

Andhra: Yelakka Venugopal Rao; Assam: Sridharan Sriram Baroda: Yusuf Pathan, Irfan Pathan, Ambati Rayudu, Munaf Patel.

Bengal: Sourav Ganguly, Manoj Tiwary, Wriddhiman Saha, Ashok Dinda.

Delhi: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma.

Gujarat: Parthiv Patel, Siddharth Trivedi Haryana: Joginder Sharma, Amit Mishra.

Hyderabad: VVS Laxman, T Suman, Pragyan Ojha.

Jharkhand: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Saurabh Tiwary.

Karnataka: Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Manish Pandey, Abhimanyu Mithun, R Vinay Kumar, Robin Uthappa.

Kerala: S Sreesanth.

Mumbai: Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Wasim Jaffer, Abhishek Raut, Rohit Sharma, Abhishek Nayar, Ramesh Powar.

Madhya Pradesh: Naman Ojha.

Punjab: Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Manpreet Gony, VRV Singh.

Railways: Murali Kartik Rajasthan: Pankaj Singh.

Saurahstra: Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara.

Tamil Nadu: Dinesh Karthik, S Badrinath, R Sathish, R Ashwin, M Vijay, L Balaji.

Uttar Pradesh: Mohammed Kaif, Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar, Sudeep Tyagi, Piyush Chawla, Rudra Pratap Singh.

Vidarbha: Umesh Yadav.

“The IPL GC met to discuss matters related to next IPL. It was decided that the player’s auction will take place on January 8 and 9, 2011 in Mumbai,” BCCI secretary N Srinivasan said in a statement. “The IPL season will start on April 8 and end on May 22 but the opening ceremony will be held on April 7.”

Even though the statement did not mention anything about troubled IPL franchisees Kochi and Rajasthan Royals, but it seems like only eight teams will be participating in the Twenty20 League 2011.

“There will be a total of 60 matches, played by eight teams,” Srinivasan said.

There has been a slight change in the semi final format, with the top two teams clashing in the first semis and the third and fourth placed team will take on each other in the second semi finals. According to the new format, based on the league standings, there will be two play-offs — play-off 1 (Team 1 vs Team 2) and play-off 2 (Team 3 vs Team 4). The winner of play-off 1 will automatically qualify for the grand final. However, the losers of play-off 1 will get a second chance as they will take on the winning team of play-off 2 in a prelim final, winner of which will progress to the grand final.

BCCI vice-president Rajiv Shukla said, “Meanwhile, the fate of the Kochi IPL team will be decided on 27 November, when the 30-day notice given to them expires.”

The consortium had been served a termination notice by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) more than 2 weeks ago. However, the group was given 30 days to respond to this notice; the lifeline that the team owners were desperate for.

But since the owners are yet to come to an agreement on issues of control and ownership, the BCCI, in all likelihood, will terminate their contract this Wednesday and are going to hold a fresh auction for the eighth team.

The group that won the Kochi bid in March this year, paying 333 million dollars (over Rs 1500 crores) for the team, has recently seen a divide over equity and control of the franchise. This, according to the BCCI, meant that the structure of the team’s ownership was not clear.

Explaining the decision after a meeting of the IPL governing council in Nagpur, BCCI President Shashank Manohar said, “The Governing Council received replies from two parties, the Rendezvous group and the other co-owners, and they both felt that the dispute still exists. The Governing Council has invoked clause 12 (1) and given them a 30 days’ notice that in case they don’t remedy these disputes in the 30 days, the franchise would stand canceled on the 31st day .”

On being asked to differentiate the Kochi case from that of Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab – who have already been axed over ownership issues, Manohar said, “This not an intermediary breach that has been committed like in the case of Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab. So that is why they have been given 30 days’ time to remedy this.”

“According to me, the two cases are altogether different. As far as Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab are concerned, there was transfer of ownership but as far as Kochi is concerned, there is no transfer of ownership,” said Manohar.

Rajasthan Royals’ court plea challenging the termination is being heard today in the Bombay High Court.

The CEO of the Kochi group, Satyajit Gaikwad, said they had asked for 10 days and got 30, and was pretty confident that the differences will be solved. “We are very grateful for the extension…and we hope to tie up at the earliest,” said Gaikwad.

Gavaskar is said to have masterminded the creation of Rendezvous Sports World Pvt. Ltd (RSWPL) which got a bunch of investors under its umbrella to get the Kochi bid. This was confirmed by the Gaikwad family which owns 25 per cent free equity and 1 per cent paid equity in the team.

The Gaikwad family said, “We have Gavaskar’s support and full backing. It was under his guidance that we had decided to get into this.” RSWPL chairman Shailendra Gaikwad’s father, Kisan Gaikwad, said Gavaskar would look after the team’s cricketing operations and would also get a stake in the franchise. He also confirmed his interest in team Kochi and would back the team once the internal differences are sorted out.

Releasing a statement, he said, “They have asked me, individually and collectively, to come in for the cricketing part of the team. I will take a call once the internal issues are resolved.”

With this revelation, the Gaikwads can now hope to fight for the team’s survival, and their own, from a position of strength.

Meanwhile, the IPL governing council is meeting in Nagpur on Wednesday to decide the fate of the Kochi team, which is struggling with internal disputes. The Kochi franchise had been given 10 days to resolve its internal differences and form a company or face the axe like Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab.

A distraught Shilpa, who owns Indian Premier League’s first edition’s champion team along with husband Raj Kundra, questioned the BCCI’s move and said they would be more than happy to know if there was any mistake on their part.

“We don’t want to hurl stones and have not done something wrong. Even if we have done something wrong, I think, as a franchise… the passion we have done it with, we need to be treated with a little more fairness,” Shilpa said. “In any business if you have defaulted, you have to pay for that and compensate. Just throwing us is not a solution. If we have irked (anyone), we are willing to face the consequences. But you can’t just cancel us out.”

Last Sunday, Rajasthan Royals, along with Kings XI Punjab, were expelled from the IPL for alleged violations of rules, with 7 years of their 10-year contract still to go.

Shilpa also insisted on a fair probe into the whole incident and said they would extend every help in this regard. “There has to be a transparent enquiry. We will be more than happy to do all it takes to help the ED (Enforcement Directorate) to come up with a solution. So, we are not running away from that. We have invested so much time, money and passion to bring the brand upto a certain level,” she said. “We have a lot of respect for BCCI, they are a charitable institution, the members are doing their best for cricket. But we also don’t want our brand to be affected.”

Asked about the alleged irregularities in their ownership pattern, Shilpa said that the BCCI was fully aware about her husband Raj Kundra’s introduction into the franchise.

“When you buy into a team, five per cent of the money goes to the BCCI and they have accepted Raj’s money. And if there was a problem with the owner, why would they accept the money?” she asked. “Why is this question coming up after two years?”

They had already discussed the matter with the Board, the actor said, but chose not to reveal any details. “We had our dialogue directly with the BCCI and we like it to be private. We are shocked and taken aback with the whole fiasco that has happened with us,” said Shilpa.

Last Sunday, the champions of the first edition of IPL – Rajasthan Royals – were debarred along with another high profile franchise from the cash-rich league on grounds of various irregularities .

“They may have written a letter but where does the question of revoking the decision come up?” BCCI president Manohar said, when contacted at his Nagpur residence. “We have taken a final decision. That remains and no further decisions will be taken in this regard.”

After the IPL governing council meeting last Sunday, Manohar had told the media that there was infringement in agreement and breach of contract on the part of the franchise that has led to the expulsion. There were discrepancies regarding the shareholding pattern and ownership transfers, which the Board claimed were not resolved.

The BCCI’s deadline asking the franchise owners to register themselves as a company is only a week away but instead of sorting out the ownership wrangle, Kochi’s owners have entangled themselves in fresh problems.

Rendezvous Sports, which has brought the consortium together to this level, has made a fresh offer to buy the whole 25% of free equity, granted to them ‘for life’ when the franchise was set up earlier in the year, but the other owners seem unconvinced. Rendezvous has the right to choose its own partners in case of a disagreement. But the BCCI is turning a deaf ear to Rendezvous’ plea to control the consortium.

Rendezvous’ argument is that they took a risk in deciding to incur all the costs leading up to the bid until they won it, a proposal agreed to by the other investors in exchange of 25% of free equity. According to a Kochi insider, Rendezvous got the equity in consideration other than cash.

The Rendezvous Sports spokesperson Satyendra Gaekwad on Saturday denied rumours of resolving of the issue between them and the other stakeholders. “Nothing has been resolved as yet,” Gaekwad said. “There is no question that we have agreed to reduce 25 per cent to 10 per cent because the BCCI showcause notice has clearly stated that we cannot diverge from the original document and the company has to be registered and monitored.”

He further said, “We have already replied to the BCCI showcause notice as far as our shares are concerned.”

Earlier, the Board had axed the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab from the IPL and issued a notice to the Kochi franchise to resolve the ownership issue.

ED made the request to the Mumbai passport office to cease his passport after Modi allegedly refused to cooperate with its investigation into the investments made in IPL franchisees.

Modi’s lawyers, however, claimed that he was ready to cooperate and that he had already responded to the ED’s showcause notice, but was not returning to India because of security concerns. “We have submitted a reply to the show cause notice. He (Lalit Modi) is always available for questioning through video conferencing. He is not returning because the security concerns are great,” Modi’s lawyer Mahmood Abdi said. “But the request by the ED to the passport office is an extreme step and it puts somebody’s personal liberty at risk.”

On Wednesday, BCCI secretary N Srinivasan lodged criminal complaints against Modi with Chennai city police commissioner T Rajendran. Srinivasan alleged financial misappropriation to the tune of Rs 469 crores by the former chairman of the IPL. The complaints were filed as a follow-up to last month’s AGM of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The AGM had authorised Srinivasan to take the matter to the police.

The FIR comes close on the heels of Modi lashing out at Srinivasan for scrapping Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab from IPL 4.

Earlier, the ED had issued a Blue Alert for Modi’s detention over financial irregularities.