Modi's 2nd show cause reply to be less voluminous

Suspended IPL commissioner Lalit Modi will meet the May 31 deadline for replying to the Board of Control for Cricket in India's second show cause notice and it is expected to be less voluminous than his staggering 15,000-page reply to the first one, his legal advisor Mehmood Abdi said on Friday.

Modi responded to the first show cause notice over allegations of murky financial deals in the IPL and bid-rigging with a voluminous reply on May 15.

Abdi said Modi is now on course to meet the May 31 deadline for replying to the second show cause notice served on him for alleged acts that are "detrimental to world cricket".

"We intend to meet the deadline for replying to the second show cause notice as we did for the first," Abdi said.

"The volume of the reply depends on the issues raised. I don't think the reply would be as voluminous (as the first). We will try to satisfy the Board (with the reply)," Abdi said.

Modi sought and obtained a 10-day breather to reply to the second show cause notice from the BCCI. He was issued the notice on May 6 on the basis of an e-mail received from England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman Giles Clarke.

In his e-mail, Clarke levelled serious charges against Modi, which the Board found "detrimental to Indian cricket, English cricket and World cricket at large".

The notice referred to Modi's March 31 meeting in Delhi with representatives of English counties Yorkshire, Lancashire and Warwickshire in which he allegedly talked about a parallel IPL in the England and Wales in which eight existing franchises would bid for nine counties in the UK.

"You have allegedly discussed this as a commercial proposition... and also set out that IPL would guarantee each county a minimum of US $3-5 million per annum plus a staging fee of US $1.5 million if the counties supported this idea," the BCCI notice said.

"You have allegedly offered a structured deal, by which the returns would be shared 80:20 between the franchises and the counties, a player model based on the IPL model and offered inducement to gather the rest of the county members to support your ideas and goad them to overpower their own governing bodies," it said.

"You have allegedly planted a seed of thought of players' revolt if the governing bodies of respective cricket boards do not allow them to participate in this extended version of IPL," it added.

"It challenges not just the authority of BCCI but also (that of) ECB and suggested that IPL would henceforth literally shift to the hands of the franchises and the respective national governing bodies would be forced to watch helplessly while the game and the power of administration are hijacked," Srinivasan said in the notice.

Abdi said the Board is yet to reply to Modi's recent 14-page letter to BCCI president Shashank Manohar asking both him (Manohar) and secretary Srinivasan to recuse themselves from any future proceedings against the suspended IPL Commissioner.

"But I'm quite optimistic they would respond," Abdi said.

Asked about the future course of action, including legal, if the response was not favourable to Modi, Abdi said, "Let's wait and see. Let's not pre-empt the matter."

Modi had launched a scathing attack on Srinivasan in his letter to Manohar, saying the BCCI secretary should not be part of the panel adjudicating charges of financial irregularities against him.

In his letter, Modi said Manohar too should stay away from the proceedings, since it would "tantamount to being a judge, witness and a potential co-notice" in the case.

Modi alleged Srinivasan had grossly misused his power as BCCI secretary and said there was a clear case of "conflict of interests" since he was also owner of the Chennai Super Kings team in the IPL.