IPL Chairman Arun Dhumal has made a few massive statements lately that have caught the eye of the keen followers of the game.
While the IPL 2025 has garnered a lot of eyeballs, Arun Dhumal made a big statement on Saudi cricket and how it is keen to grow in the upcoming days.
He recently spoke to ESPN Cricinfo on how Saudi Arabia is looking to make big investments for the game to grow in their region. 'Grand Slam' T20 cricket, an investment through which Saudi Arabia is looking to make a market for itself in cricket.
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Talking to Cricinfo, he said that nothing concrete has been proposed to the BCCI about it yet by the Saudi Arabian Cricket Federation (SACF).
The IPL 2025 mega auction that happened in Jeddah was a big part of the cricketing focus being planted in that part of the Asian continent. Previously, several Saudi ventures like Aramco, Visit Saudi and Neom have linked up with the IPL or with the various franchises.
No Proposal To Be Discussed Yet: IPL Chairman Arun Dhumal
Meanwhile, Arun Dhumal has clarified that the BCCI is yet to receive anything concrete on Saudi's vision to propel cricket in that part of the world.
"Saudi Cricket as such is part of ICC. They're wanting to make some investments in cricket so that cricket becomes more relevant in that part of the world, given the diaspora from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh… There's a lot of aspirations and demands from those guys that more cricketing activity should happen there. "It can't be 'yes' or 'no' because there is no proposal to be discussed; it is just media speculation," there's nothing that we can do about media speculating."Dhumal said.
"There has been a lot of speculation as to any talk between IPL and BCCI and Saudi Cricket with regard to their interest in IPL. I would want to categorically deny any of that. The idea was to give them a flavour of what IPL is all about. When you see the kind of numbers that happened there with regard to this mega-auction, everybody was startled as to how big this game is" he further added.
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He said that BCCI, on their part, is doing their best to expand the game in all corners of the world, and staging the IPL auction in Jeddah was a part of the same.
"Our duty as the BCCI is to go to all these different places and give them the flavour of the sport… Going forward, in case cricket has to grow through the length and breadth of the whole globe, it is paramount that we take it to different landscapes, different territories and showcase what this game is all about. That was the intent." he added saying.
In the same interaction, he made another massive revelation regarding the return of the Champions League. The last edition of the Champions League was played in 2014. He said that the return of the tournament depends on many things, most importantly, the required window to host it.
"It was done before the opportune time for that kind of event. I would not say no to anything but everything depends on whether we have an availability of time… If it creates value for cricket at a global stage, definitely we can look at that." Dhumal said.
Previously, Dhumal had spoken about IPL being expanded to 94 matches starting from IPL 2028.
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