Kathmandu, January 5
The Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) is planning to terminate its contract with Seven3Sports.
This comes after Jatin Ahluwalia, the co-founder of Seven3Sports, the commercial and strategic partner of the Nepal T20 League, fled to India.
CAN President Chatur Bahadur Chand says Ahluwalia fled to India as he did not want to pay the money his company owed to CAN.
“He told us he’s going to India to manage the bank transfer, but it looks like he’s not coming back. This automatically terminates the contract we had between us and them,” says Chand.
Ahluwalia, citing security reasons, has refused to return to Nepal.
CAN, in May 2022, signed an eight-year agreement with Seven3Sports. According to the agreement, Seven3Sports would pay can around Rs 330 million for having exclusive rights to the Nepal T20 League.
As per the agreement, CAN should have received around Rs 39 million for the first edition, but it says Seven3Sports only gave it Rs 12 million so far in two instalments.
Speaking to Onlinekhabar, Chand says that CAN is ready to terminate the contract with Seven3Sports if Ahluwalia does not contact them soon. He also says it would seek legal remedies to solve this issue.
“We will finish the tournament and then deal with his issue,” says Chand.
According to Chand, Ahluwalia was planning to pay CAN through Nepali sponsors and ticket money. But as both did not happen, he fled to India.
Ahluwalia before leaving Nepal had even proposed that CAN take the tournament to Dubai. After news of fixing surfaced in Nepali media, he told CAN things would be easier for them in Dubai.
“We refused that offer and told him we’d seek permission from the government to do the next edition in Dubai,” says Chand.
This, however, will not affect players as the franchise teams will pay them, says Chand.
“The teams are in contact and they will pay the players,” he says.
