Daily Times

LAHORE: Multan Sultans co-owner Ali Khan Tareen and Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore have registered their interest in investing in teams in the Hundred, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) 100-ball competition which is due to start next summer after its recent postponement. The ECB initially rejected the involvement of private investment when devising its new city-based tournament, but the financial fallout of the Covid-19 crisis –– which could cost the English game as much as £380 million (US$470m) –– could prompt a softening of that stance. Chief executive Tom Harrison said last week that the pandemic could force the ECB into “a place where we have to look at some of those opportunities”. Tareen –– whose father Jehangir is a long-time close advisor to Prime Minister Imran Khan –– said that he believes potential investors should have at least some links to the team they want a stake in. Having owned a house in Hampshire for the best part of a decade, Tareen wants to invest in the Southern Brave, if such an opportunity becomes possible.

Tareen, whose Sultans side finished top of the PSL’s group stages thanks to a data-driven strategy before Covid-19 curtailed the season, said that his ties with coaches and backroom staff could help Southern Brave succeed. Each county will receive an annual sum of £1.3m (US$1.6m) from the competition, and Tareen said that any private investors should keep in mind that the rationale behind the Hundred was in part to ensure the financial viability of the county game. Under the Hundred’s existing model, all eight teams are owned by the ECB with no private investors. Last week, a report by the advisory firm Oakwell Sports recommended that the ECB should consider selling equity in the teams to reduce the financial hit of Covid-19, and to help “unlock the south Asian, UK-based fanbase”. The report’s authors included Mike Fordham, who helped launch the IPL in 2008 and supported a private ownership model while working as head of the Hundred for two-and-a-half years at the ECB.

Mysore, the CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders’ parent company Red Chillies Entertainment, which is owned by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, said that he had met with two ECB representatives “three or four years ago” while the possibility of private investment was being floated, and had engaged in “some interesting conversations” with Harrison in 2015 when the pair were in Barbados. Red Chillies purchased the Trinidad and Tobago franchise in the CPL in 2015, renaming the team Trinbago Knight Riders a year later.

Unlike Tareen, Mysore suggested that the group’s interest in the competition would likely demand a controlling stake in a team. Any shift towards involving private investors in the Hundred would require counties’ approval, and there is likely to be a review into the competition’s viability when the ECB’s incoming chairman Ian Watmore begins his tenure in August. The ECB decided against such a model in order to maintain control of the new teams but there would likely be no shortage of willing overseas investors.