BCCI T20 Postponed

Board says the tourney, slated to be held in the city next month, put off to allow IPL franchisees to have enough time to prepare their teams ahead of the 2nd edition

Suhrid Barua, Pune Mirror, February 20, 2009

There was always a great deal of scepticism over the feasibility of holding the BCCI's Zonal League and the All-India knockout Twenty20 matches (for the Mushtaq Trophy) scheduled to be held in Pune from March 23 to April 5 because the dates were running too close for comfort, if not clashing with the dates of the Indian Premier League (IPL). With the multi-million-dollar league kick-starting from April, the scheduling of the BCCI's Zonal League and the All-India knockout T20 games were always on a shaky ground. "Look, the earliest we could finish the tourney was on April 5, which is just five days before the IPL begins.
Also, the IPL franchisees wanted more time to prepare their teams for the mega league and having the tourney on April 5, which would have left the players of the various ILP teams with very little time to get together," said BCCI chief administrative officer Prof. Ratnakar Shetty.So was a formal request put in by the IPL franchisees regarding the same? "I think so. We will have this tourney at the start of the 2009-10 season," he added.