Minus the ads, BCCI tells players

In a move that will have far reaching consequences in cricket's commercial space, the BCCI has restricted a player from endorsing more than three sponsors at a time.

There's more; no sponsor can contract more than two players, and every deal a player signs has to be approved by the Board. This step has the potential to snowball into a major crisis.

Scores of ads featuring cricketers will now be history. The players are tightlipped, sports management agencies in a tizzy. The immediate concern of course is what happens to existing contracts?

"Say everyone has 8-10 endorsements. Which are the five we are getting rid of? What are going to be the legal remedies provided by the BCCI to keep the player out of that, because it's not the player's knee-jerk action that resulted in this kind of thing happening," Latika Khaneja the MD of Collage Sports says.

So just what is at stake? Here's an idea about the size of the pie:

• Sachin Tendulkar has as many as 14 brands to endorse which earn him close to Rs 45 crore a year; and demands 70 days of his time in a year.
• Skipper Rahul Dravid has 12 brands which take up to 60 days in a year and make him approximately Rs 13 crore.
• M S Dhoni's posterboy image earns him Rs 8 crore a year for the 15 brands that he lends his name to. It takes away 75 days a year of his time.
• Comeback man Sourav Ganguly has to spare time for seven brands, which takes up 35 days in a year and makes him approximately Rs 5 crore.

Experts believe that the BCCI may have overplayed its hand, and could have considered easier options.

"You can always limit the number of days, or in other words, the time that a player can devote to endorsements," Jeet Banerjee, the MD of Gameplan says.

The BCCI claims the decision was made on the recommendation of the seven ex-captains who attended their special meeting on Saturday. But not quite, says one of those captains.

"I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding, a little bit of misinterpretation. Some of the recommendations given by some of the captains is that, more than anything else during the match days or before the tour, it's better that the players avoid the endorsements," former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth says.

So has the BCCI fired its gun from the shoulders of former captains? Will the players launch a legal challenge to this move? That is the question that has more than a million dollars riding on it.