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The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), has reportedly turned down the billion-dollar offer to restructure The Hundred from Lalit Modi, the former Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner. In the latest development, the ECB is set to not pursue talks with Lalit Modi about The Hundred, because they are not interested in selling it as a whole.
As per the report from Telegraph Sport, Lalit Modi’s representatives met with Vikram Banerjee, the ECB Director of Operations, who is the de facto head of The Hundred, and Richard Gould, the ECB Chief Executive, laying out a 10-year offer to buy the league, while funding it through private investment. Notably, his proposal included a 10-team league with minimal IPL involvement, an allocation of a $100 million purse for the players over 10 years, along with guaranteed $1 billion in revenue for the ECB.
But, despite his big plans, the ECB is not going to go through with the offer, fearing losing control of the peak cricket season months, along with the worry about putting their relationship with the BCCI at risk.
The plan of Lalit Modi to run the restructured league, in the T20 format, would have been from July 1 to August 15, and he spoke about it to Telegraph Sport, “I would give them a guarantee of a billion dollars. A lot of people have been in touch with me interested in backing it and I made a proposal to the ECB but it had a lot of conditions. The Hundred format does not work and there should only be two franchises sold to Indian buyers. It will only work if it is an English competition and not Indo-centric.”
Moreover, Lalit Modi was banned for life by the BCCI in 2013 from any involvement in Indian cricket due to “serious misconduct and indiscipline” regarding two new IPL franchise bids. It led to him ultimately getting forced out of India, and since then, he has lived in London.
