The Indian Cricket League announced a prize money corpus of Rs 3.24 crores on Tuesday for its upcoming ICL 20s World Series 2008 in Hyderabad, starting on April 9.
The winners stand to gain Rs 1.25 crore and the runners-up will be richer by Rs 75 lakh while the third-placed side will pocket Rs 50 lakh.
That’s not all, for there are prizes to be won in the preliminary stage as well. While every team winning a match in the league phase stands to gain Rs 10 lakhs and the man of the match will be richer by Rs 2 lakhs.
On the face of it, though the money being offered by the ICL might seem quite less compared to the moolah being offered by the Indian Premier League — Rs 12 crore — but a closer analysis proves to the contrary.
While the World Series is a seven-day affair (April 9-15) with just one match being scheduled per day, the IPL is spread over 44 days and features 59 matches. Going by these numbers, the IPL prize money for a week would be Rs one crore 90 lakh approximately — much less than what the ICL is offering.
Himanshu Mody, the business head of Zee Sports, said, “We have started earning good revenue, hence the lucrative prize money. “In fact, all our advertisements on air have been sold out; this tournament too will be a huge success like the 20s Challenge.”
The tournament promises to be another blockbuster with Inzaman-ul Haq leading the formidable Pakistan team, while Chris Cairns will be captaining the star-studded ICL World team. R Sathish will skipper the ICL India team.
News Source http://www.hindustantimes.com/
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