The franchise which is owned by Rendezvous Sports World finally satisfied the notice issued by the BCCI at the start of November meaning the franchise will be allowed to take part in next months player auctions. The uncertainly surrounding the Kochi IPL franchise was finally ended.The Rendezvous Sports surprisingly won the rights to one of two new IPL franchises.The consortium paid $333 million for the right’s to place a new franchise in Kochi .
The victory or upcoming of this new team had upset a lot of people who wanted the new team in another city . The team initially faced many problems even to get started as Modi was claimed of trying to discredit the team and create a reason to remove the franchise from Rendezvous Sports so it could be moved to another city .The Junior foreign minister helped Rendezvous Sports during the bidding process and although Tharoor had no stake in the franchise he said the Kochi team had bid in an “open and transparent” manner.The Rendezvous Sports have been trying to resolve the ownership differences between the five groups of investors and after successfully bidding of $333 million at the IPL franchise in March still it was not decided who was suppose to control the franchise .
The group of investors includes finance organizations like Anchor Earth, Parinee Developers, Rosy Blue and Film Wave; who hold 75 per cent of the equity . The Gaekwads family had helped in many ways and had made it possible to win the bidding so remaining 25 per cent of the franchise was given to the Gaekwards as free equity for their help and support .
The Kochi coach Geoff Lawson has announced that the new Kochi team will reveal their full team line up at the end of March and prior to the start of the 2011 tournament in April. Apart from their bidding for top players the team also trial’s 43 local players and will announce the final team soon . It is reported that top and sr.players like VVS Laxman, RP Singh, Sreesanth and Vinay Kumar will test the local players and finally the best of them will be included in team . The co-owner of the team Vivek Venugopal said the teams logo , name and team colours is still in process and it will be dis closed to media and public by end of February .
