The Indian Cricket League (ICL) is primarily a private cricket league run by Zee group. Subhash Chandra is credited to establish this concept into reality which runs parallel to the Indian Premier League (IPL).
IPL is managed by BCCI. In fact, IPL was started in response of ICL. ICL includes several big international names and it follows the Twenety20 format. ICL has also given a new lifeline to many top quality regional, national and international players along with retired players.
Most of the matches played in ICL take place at Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad, Tau Devi Lal stadium in Panchkula, near Chandigarh, and at Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Gurgaon, near New Delhi.
ICL started with participation of 6 teams but in the second session of the tournament total 8 teams participated. In the later half of the tournament one more team was added to it, thus taking the total number of teams to 9. However, to the utter dismay of players participating in ICL, they have been banned by cricket boards of their respective countries because of the ICL’s reputation as a rebel faction. There is an ongoing battle between ICL and BCCI over the players’ issues.
ICL organized its first edition in Nov-Dec 2007 with six teams. The first two editions were won by Chennai Superstars whereas Hyderabad Heroes winning the third edition held in March 2008. The fourth edition was slightly different in the aspect that it consisted of domestic players and Chandigarh Lions was the deserving winner of this edition.
The names of the teams are;
Hyderabad Heroes
Royal Bengal Tigers (Kolkata)
Mumbai Champs
Delhi Giants
Lahore Badshahs
Dhaka Warriors
Chennai Superstars
Chandigarh Lions
Ahmedabad Rockets
Several former international cricketers including Tony Greig, Kiran More, Kapil Dev and Dean Jones etc are the board members of ICL.