Cricket Gang!

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has decided to appeal to the ICC regarding the exclusion of all 11 Pakistani players from the IPL after the auction in Mumbai this week. Since the IPL is a domestic tournament, it is outside the ICC's purview and so it is unlikely cricket's ruling body will be able to do much about it, but the matter continues to rage on in Pakistan.

"We will be lodging a complaint with the ICC and I will personally table this issue at the next meeting of the ICC executive board on February 10," said Ijaz Butt, the PCB chairman, after a meeting with the country's sports minister in Lahore. "The IPL may be a private and commercial enterprise but this issue involves the pride of a nation and we are going to pursue it with the ICC."

Pakistan's players have reacted with anger and attributed the blackout to politics and Butt had already expressed his disappointment. Echoing these views, Pakistan sports minister Ijaz Jhakrani has now termed the exclusion of Pakistan players "a serious issue."

"How can they [IPL franchises] avoid bidding for players from the world champion team?" he said after meeting the PCB chairman. "It's our unanimous decision to take up this issue at the highest forum and lodge our protest at the ICC." As a sign of protest against the snub to Pakistan's cricketers, the speaker of the lower house had also stopped a parliamentary delegation from traveling to India.

The Indian government was quick to distance itself from the results of the IPL auction, while N Srinivasan, the BCCI secretary and owner of the Chennai Super Kings franchise, has said has said the Indian board and government had nothing to do with the player selections.

Butt, however, said these were excuses without substance. "They should tell us if franchises had reservations about signing Pakistani players because they were worried about security issues and availability of the players why were our players included in the auction in the first place," he said. "If IPL franchise have so many issues with signing our players then why did the IPL first approach us to send them government clearances for the players."