Bangalore, March 08: A last-minute effort to get Ravindra Jadeja on board for the IPL 2010 has failed with the cricketer’s appeal being rejected by the league’s Governing Council.
According to a report in the website cricinfo, Niranjan Shah, the IPL vice-chairman, appealed to the BCCI president Shashank Manohar to remove the one-year ban imposed on Jadeja before a meeting held in Mumbai to discuss the tender process for the two new franchises. However, Manohar reportedly declined the plea and Jadeja will miss the third edition of the league.
IPL chairman Lalit Modi had said that the Jadeja matter was beyond him and Manohar had the discretion to take the final decision.
“He [Manohar] did not want to set a wrong precedent, so he dismissed the request. So Jadeja now cannot play in the IPL (this year)” an IPL official said.
Jadeja had been banned from this year’s IPL as punishment for violating the IPL’s terms and conditions, trying to negotiate outside his contract with the Rajasthan Royals.
However, Jadeja himself maintained innocence, saying that he had sought prior approval from the BCCI, before deciding to negotiate with other franchises. In his letter to the BCCI, reportedly written two weeks before Saturday’s ban, Jadeja said his contract with Rajasthan had expired on December 31, 2009 and that they did not give him any indications they were going to renew his contract.
——-Agencies